Gotta love the beach life!!

We took a local flight from Chaing Mai to Phucket (changing at Bangkok), then a bus to a guest house in Phucket the night (as we arrived quite late). Next day we walked to the bus station and got a 3 hour bus to Krabi, once there we got a sawangethaw ((can't remember how you spell it) which does a sort of bus route, only it's not a bus it's a truck thing with seats in the back!! ) to Ao Nang and then a long boat to take us to the peninsula of Railay as it's not accessible by road. Phewey, going from a to b is not always straight forward or direct!! As it was off season we managed to get a really nice bungalow for half of it's normal price. We checked in for 5 nights!

Railay is a really beautiful place, nice beaches with a stunning backdrop of limestone cliffs. It's rock climbers heaven and in fact is famous in climbing circles and people come from all over to climb here. There are many climbing routes all over the place and you can sit on pretty much any beach and see people of all levels and ages climbing, it's pretty awesome to watch.

So, our first 5 days were spent lazing around on the beach, there were quite a few beaches just a short walk or if the tide was in a longboat ride away, or playing cards in bars with the various friends that we made there. Mostly with Mike from Canada, he loved a bit of Nommies!! We spent almost every night (and breakfast) at the same bar, it was not far from our bungalow and was such a chilled place and the guy that ran it, B, was cool, he'd always chat to us about various things and we could get dinner from any local restaurant and eat it there....sweet!! Plus as it was low season a lot of places weren't open and so lots of people spent the evenings at B's and there was always a good crowd in, playing cards or connect 4 (the thais love connect 4) and just relaxing.

This relaxing lark was hard work though, after about 4 days of it we decided we'll spend the rest of our time there until we had to go to Bangkok to meet Chris and Kate as it was just so nice!

Seeing as we were in climbers heaven we decided to have a go at it and booked ourselves on a half day climbing course. This involved a bit of training in tying knots and the safety aspect of it and how to hold the climber and the like, then 2 different climbs on the 'training' routes. These were called training routes but they were a bit hard core to us!! Even to get started on the first one was a challenge in itself requiring the strength and flexibility of a gymnast and nerves of steel!! On the first route Rich twisted his back and pulled some muscles and couldn't continue. I pressed on as best I could though and managed to complete the first one. The second one I got almost to the top buy all my muscles had turned to jelly and the last hold was just to awkward for me to get too, hey ho. I had a good go at it and have much admiration for the pro's. They make it look so easy. For the next 3 days my muscles were hurting so much, some I didn't know I had and some I didn't realise how much I used, my brushing teeth and wipng bum muscles were in a lot of trouble!!!! I was also covered in bruises and scratches, jeez, people do this for fun!!!!

Apart from lazing around playing games and stuff and our bit of climbing the only other thing we did there was on our last day we went on a day trip to 'James Bond Island'. We'd had brilliant weather all week apart from the occaisional morning shower and so as we made our way to the meeting point at around 6am, and it was drizzly, we didn't really pay too much attention to it. We had some breakfast and then our long boat arrived. By the time we'd waded through the sea to get to the boat the rain was thick and horizontal and we were soaked! As we climbed in, Rich suggested not bothering, he wasn't feeling too good and the rain was a bit of a pain, but I said it'd pass and soon it'd be fine....oh how I wishI'd listened to Rich!!! It turned out to be the worse day of our year and Rich and I were wishing it would just end!! It wasn't so much the rain that was the problem (although we did spend the day soaking wet and each time we were in the bus the air con was on and so we were also freezing!) but the fact that it was a shit day trip. We didnt' learn a thing, the guide didn't tell us anything, not even here name. We took a boat, then a bus then another boat to this island. The guide said, this is James Bond Island, you've got half an hour. The island itself was the biggest tourist trap I've ever seen. The man with the golden gun was filmed here (hence James Bond Island) and I was expecting a beautiful beach where we could sit (despite the rain) and just enjoy it's peace and tranquility. No, what it was was a bit market. Everyone was herded to the only accessible part of the island where loads of market stalls were set up on the beautiful beach selling tourist tat at stupid prizes. You couldn't sit on the beach or enjoy any peace and tranquility at all and there were about 20 boat loads of people.

So that pretty much ruined it for us and we were miserable and pissed off all day. We visited a 'floating village' where we had a very crap lunch, a temple, a cave and the usaul day trip stuff adn we hated it all, we were so glad when the day was over. So if anyone is ever in that part of the world and is tempted by the James Bond Island tour, don't do it!!! Right, winging over!!! We spent our last night drinking buckets of Samsong, coke and red bull at B's and sharing poo stories with 2 dutch couples we met there, it was very funny!!! As a departing gift B let us have one of his buckets as a souvenir which was nice :-)

departed Railay the following day and got a boat, a minibus then an overnight coach to Bangkok, where I had something drastic done to my hair (was bored with it!!) and we prepared ourselves for Chris and Kates arrival. I have to say that Rich and I were incredibly excited about this and were like 2 kids on Christmas eve!!