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Railay Beach has been one of our favourite places so far. We have spent four days here because we like it so much!
We arrived here by boat from Phi Phi and had to wade through the sea with all our bags (there's no pier). The girl next to me tripped and dropped her bag in the sea with her camera etc. Oops! After finally making it safely to dry land, we decided to splash out on a decent hotel, and found ourselves in an amazing room with a proper shower (imagine that!) and tv, minibar etc. Oh the luxury! There was a massive balcony that looked out onto a lake filled with Koi, with a swimming pool next to it that looked like a postcard view. Oh, and there were monkeys climbing all over the telegraph pole next to the pool. I think that excited me more than any of the hotel!!
After dumping our bags in our room of luxury, we made our way to the West Beach (there are two beacher back to back, like Phi Phi). Railay is connected to mainland Thailand - it is a small peninsula. But there are cliffs blocking any access to mainland Krabi, so it feels like an island - no cars and no view of the mainland at all. The West Beach was absolutely stunning. The sand is brilliant white and so fine that when it's wet it is like clay. The water was clear and turqoise, and the sun was shining. Heaven! Even better than that, our hotel's 'sister hotel' lay on this beach so we were allowed access to their pool, which was right next to the beach and looked out to sea. So all round, it was pretty damn good. The only annoyance was the massage ladies, who walk past every 5 minutes asking if you want a massage or your feet scrubbed. They won't take no for an answer, and kept telling Clout that his feet were 'very bad' and had too much skin. So you can imagine his feelings after hours of that. In the end, we warned each other if we saw them coming and dropped down to pretend to be sleeping!
Lunch was usually in one of the bars on the beach and I had the best coconut soup ever. If we could be bothered, we'd go for a wander or a swim, and we were very lazy! In the evenings we ventured over to East Beach (about 200m away from West, and our hotel was directly inbetween both). East Beach came alive at night, with lots of small restaurants and bars. The bars were lovely - they were on stilts over the sea, and everyone lay on cushiony things with an oil burner between them. There was a spectacular lightening storm far out at sea every night, which we could see perfectly from these bars. And there were little crabs crawling around us as we lay drinking in the bars (I managed to get a photo of one). The first night we found a bar that had cheap drinks and free pool, so we started a mammoth pool session and ended up playing doubles against the locals and a few other travellers.
We wandered out one day to the end of the peninsula, which was two mountains covered in greenery. It turned out there was a lagoon in the middle of one of the outcrops, and you had to rockclimb up the mountain. That was fun - there were ropes going all the way up so we could use them to climb and to absail down. When we got to the top, there was the most amazing view. We took some photos but you have to ignore us in them, as we are sweaty, smelly and not very pleasant. But the view was really something, and we then made our way to the lagoon. It was too difficult to get down into the lagoon but we had a good view and tried to take pictures that did it justice. We then slowly made our way back down the mountain and found a cave beach with mini islets all around. There was a penis temple there (Clout got very excited). The story is that a princess died when her boat sank near to that cove. Now, whenever the locals go out to fish they leave a gift for her that will keep her happy and encourage her to guard their journey. It turns out they all think a giant wooden penis will do that nicely. And I couldn't agree more!
Our last night in Railey we had a slight panic about money and decided to bail on the nice hotel. Instead we stayed in a tree-house-type-room. We had to climb ladders to get up there and it was made entirely from wood, with very think walls and lots of geckos to keep us company! It was pretty rancid, smelly, and had no sink or even shower. And there were coconuts falling out of the trees on our roof every couple of hours, which was really loud and made us jump out of our skin each time. But it did the job for the last night, and we got suitably drunk to aid a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, we had to get up early the next day and brave a long journey by boat/but/boat to Kho Samui...
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