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We stayed in Railay for six nights in total. Railay is in mainland Thailand, although it is only accessible by boat, so it does have an island feel about it. It is a lot quieter than Ko Phi Phi, and there were less annoying posh kids around which was a nice change. There are a couple of really nice beaches and cliffs. It is a popular destination for climbing. We had a relaxing time there.
For the first three nights we stayed in a standard (for us) cheap and slightly rubbish guesthouse. It was fine though. After that we decided to treat ourselves and stayed in a much nicer place for the other three nights. It was still cheap though. It had the works: tv, swimming pool, hot showers, flushing toilets and it was clean and new. Luxury.
We spent a lot of time relaxing on the beach and by the pool. It was like a summer holiday. Every evening Alan went to play football on the beach with the locals. Loads of them play every night when the tides out until it gets dark. It was a bit crazy with 20 a side games going on at some points. He enjoyed it though.
One day we took a walk through the jungle to another beach further up the coast. It was a bit of a hike and it was really jungley and green. On the way it started to absolutely hammer it down with rain, we got soaked. We had to seek shelter in a small restuarent (hut) until it passed. Alan was amazed that the roof was waterproof, seeing as it was made with leaves. Once we got to the other beach we played a bit of frisbee before going through another small jungle path back to our own beach. It was quite steep and muddy, but we made it home in one piece.
We also visited some caves in the island. They were called the Crystal caves because the walls were all sparkly . They were quite small but much nicer than the last caves we went to in Vietnam as we were the only ones there and there was a nice absence or tacky colorful lights.
We ate tasty food every night, and went for cocktails a couple of times as they were pretty cheap. They had some nice bamboo bars on the waters edge. It was a pretty chilled out atmosphere. We met a couple from New Zealand and had a few drinks with them and got some helpful advice for our New Zealand trip.
On the last day in Railay were orgasnised to go climbing and we arrived at the climbing shop at 9am ready to go. After being fitted with harnesses we walked down to the cliffs on the beach. It was just us in our group and two instructors, one girl and one older man. At first we climbed in the shady jungle bit . The first few climbs were quite easy and not too high. Alan was good at climbing. After a couple of climbs we moved down to the cliffs on the beach. Our guide let Alan try a really hard climb that started with an overhang. He did give him a good push up at the start to get him going. It was a really high climb. I got to do an easier one then we both had a go on a smaller but quite hard climb. It was quite scary, (well I thought so anyway) We finished at about 1pm after 4 hours of climbing. It was good fun.
That evening we bought tickets back to Krabi for the following day for about 3 quid each. In the moring we checked out and walked down to the port, and found that there was only one other person waiting to go to Krabi. The boat guys said we had to wait until there were more people or they wouldn't take us. We waited about an hour. The other girl waiting had to catch a plane and ended up having to charter her own boat for about 20 quid. Some scousers came along and paid about 60 quid for a boat to Ko Phi Phi because they were idiots. They could have got on the chartered boat for 7 quid half an hour earlier. We waited for ages and eventually we agreed to pay a couple of quid extra for them to take us. It was quite annoying, but there was not a lot you could do about it.
We spent one night in Krabi before catching the plane to Kuiala Lumpur the next day. We only had about 5 quid left in Thai currency and we didnt want to get any more out before moving on so we just had a couple of cheap meals in the food stall area and that was it. Bye Bye Thailand
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