Railay Thailand

So I'm here on the beach in Thailand. The place is pretty cool. I'm not on an island but we are only accessible by boat because there are cliffs all around us. There's about a 400m beach with these long tailed boats (taxis) and some rocks out in the water, and cliffs with people rock climbing. Dan and I have really just been chilling. I will take a climbing lesson on Friday before I head back to Bangkok.

 

On Wednesday we met up with this girl Hermine who lives and works in Shanghai. She was on our team at the hat tournament. She is on the next beach down with some friends. The reason its the next beach is because a cliff and some rocks stick out into the water essentially separating them. We walked it at low tide though, its tricky. We met up to go snorkeling.

 

It was the sunset trip, so it left at 2pm, we decided this was best to avoid the 10-2 sun. We went out on a dive boat with about 26 people and stopped at a bunch of islands, which are really these huge rocks sticking out of the water with no beach. But there is coral down on the bottom and lots of cool fish. I saw an octopus and some neat colorful fish. This snorkeling trip was far better than my last one in key west. In key west my mask didn't fit so it filled with water and and I couldn't relax and breathe through my mouth so I inhaled lots of seawater. This time I was A OK and managed to dive down and swim along the bottom. It was neat. Since we were out in the afternoon we never saw anyone on the water since all of the other tours go in the morning. When the sun went down we ate dinner which was this seafood curry and vegetable curry. It was quite delicious, the first time I've had sweet potato in curry. Then we went for the night swim to observe phosphorescent plankton. You really can't believe it until you put on a mask, stick your head in the water and kick your legs around. Then you see all of these sparks and its cool. The plankton absorb the sun all day and then illuminate when they are touched I guess. So that was a nice day, I coated myself in sunblock after learning my lesson last summer and my chest is still pretty white.

 

One night Dan and I tried to take a boat to Ao Nang, the main town that these beaches are accessed by, to meet Hermine and company for dinner. So we say "Ao Nang" and hop on a boat and the guys are like ok. They were eating dinner so we sat down and they offered us some food. Since we just had 2 people they said it would be more expensive so we said ok. So we figured we had to wait for dinner to finish. So when dinner finished they broke out some tobacco and rolled some joints, maybe there was something else mixed in. So we waited for them to smoke. They kept joking and saying "Ao nang tomorrow morning, and then laughing." Then they told me that they were waiting for some water and that it would be here in 30 minutes. So I said "how many bottles do you want, I'll go buy some right now for you". One guy said "how much money do you have?" So I said, "how many bottles do you want?" Then another guy said "One million" and they all laughed. Another boat came in about 50 meters out from us and stopped. They guy pointed and said "water". I was a little confused and thought the water was on that boat or something. Maybe it was special water. The guys broke out a big rug mat and started playing cards. Dan and I were like we aren't going anywhere soon. Then some foreigners came up and said "anybody going to Railay West?" (the next beach). I told them we were going to Ao Nang but that the guys were joking with us and taking a while to get going. The girls said well it looks like your boat is high and dry, they must be waiting for the tide to come in. Thats when we realized what the joke about a million bottles of water was and we laughed. So yeah, we stayed where we were for dinner and learned to take note of the tides.

 

Today is Thursday, Dan doesn't like the overnight train so he has a flight out of one hour away Phuket for tomorrow morning back to Bangkok. I am hoping to get a train ticket for Friday night so I can arrive in Bangkok in the morning and go straight to pickup. I'm also hoping this girl from Bangkok that plays ultimate will give me a couch to sleep on. Tomorrow morning I'm taking a rock climbing class. The climbing looks so sweet here so I figure I can't pass it up.