I'm a week late on this sorry...
So after our pretty low key night in Krabi, Kay and I got up at 6:30 a.m. to be ready for the van that was going to pick us up for our rock climbing adventure. The truck as a little bit late, but I'm going to blame it on the 2 divas and their dad who were on the truck when it pulled up. Just going out on a limb and saying that they were late. The truck was really just a song tao that belonged to the King Climbers company for Railay. The drive was probably 20 minutes long and it dropped us off at a random pier. We walked all the way out to the end and waited for about 10 minutes while our boat was being prepared. The long tail boats are something else, they are really cool looking. Their gargantuan engines are up at the back of the boat and the propeller is way down at the end of a long pole (long tail, get it?). The engines reminded me of the pod racers in Star Wars. They were as loud as well. Finally, we were told to jump on. The ride on the long tail was probably only 10 minutes and we were treated to an amazing view the entire way. The picture we have up on Facebook of the big rock on Railay beach is pretty much the normal view you get if you look anywhere. Big inspiring rock walls towering over you everywhere you turn.
The beach has two sides; an east side and a west side. The east side has a proper dock and the west side is the one in all of the pictures which does not have a dock. There are actually quite a few resorts on the east side and they are much less expensive than the west side ones simply because they aren't on the nice world renowned beach. Kay and I found this kind of funny considering it's a 5 minute walk from one side to the other in the shade and on a nice path. We docked on the east side (a lot of the tourists will come on the west side with no dock, but I'll get to that later). When we landed, we all jumped off and followed our guide to the King Climbers HQ on the west side (a 5 min walk). Once we arrived, we were given the proper gear and water bottles which we put our names on. Then, it was off to the wall. We only did a half day so we only saw one wall but the full day climbing groups get to go to a couple different walls. I was given a big coil of rope to carry up for our guides.
When we arrived at the wall, we all sat down and hung around while our guides flew up the walls placing our ropes in various points on the wall. Guy and Ian were our guides and Ian was the one up on the wall. We would later learn that he has climbed the routes on this wall over 500 times and after seeing him glide over every inch of it in under 5 minutes with 5 ropes on his back, I believe him. Because our top ropes were set up so high, they had to clip our rope up at the anchor on the top as usual, but then twice more, our rope was fed through a quickdraw. This made our rope go up the wall in a zig-zag fashion. They did this to prevent us from swinging too far to the left or right if we fell. As we passed by the quickdraws, we would "simply" unclip our rope from them to continue on up. "Okay Nick now unclip your rope from that carabiner...Nick you have to unclip that carabiner", ya Ian I got it man, I'm just taking a break. Having one hand on the blistering rock, holding you up, and the other fumbling with the stupid carabiner was quite difficult. Fun though!
So once everything was set up, Guy asked the crowd who had climbed before, I put my hand up but said that it was only indoors "Doesn't matter!!!" Okay Guy. Before I knew it, belay was on and I was on my way up the rock. The rock was easy enough to get up, your shoes stick way more to real rock than they do with holds in a gym which was very nice. I found myself more comfortable in my footwork. I got up to the quickdraw pretty easily and looked back down, holy shit I'm like 35 feet up and I'm only halfway. I called down to Guy and said I was done. "Hahahahaha, Nick, you are doing great, but you are not done, you haven't fallen and you are only halfway!" Alright fine. Every time I feel like I'm fine and comfortable, Thailand comes along and says to hell with your comfort zone (see: rope swing, waterfalls, motorbike in streets, etc). By this point, I'm well above the trees and it's getting extremely hot. I'm having a ton of fun and the whole way, Guy is giving me awesome tips and pointers from below, "Nick, easier on the left! Nick, left foot up by left knee! Nick, don't forget to move your feet!" As I got closer to the top which was probably close to 75 feet, the wall started to angle outwards slightly. Which meant that every time I reached up, my hand was going up and slightly behind my head as my back came closer and closer to being parallel with the deck below. This just made it a little tougher mentally. But I made it! Rappelled down, and had a nice little break.
Kay went up a different route and killed it. She managed to get herself very high up as well before a certain tricky move got the better of her. Ian again would not let her come down until she had tried to get up at least 3 times. Ian was literally telling her he wouldn't let her down until she fell a whole bunch of times, which she did. It might seem like Guy and Ian were dicks but it was all very lighthearted, they just wanted us to do our best and leave it all out on the rock. The 2 divas that I had mentioned earlier were busy taking selfies and checking their nails so Ian asked if I wanted to try a different route. That route was a lot more difficult and it took me close to 20 minutes on the wall to make it to the top. I took a Gopro video of it, but it's mostly just rock and me cursing to myself as I ran out of energy. The divas did finally go up on the wall and it was so bad I actually had to turn around and not watch. One of them had 1 inch nails which she obviously thought would help, right? Well it was awful, the guides saw her nails and laughed in her face, and then laughed behind her back to me. You can't blame them, really. Well Wolverine tried her best but the sound of her nails on the rock and the thought of them ripping off was too much for me so I don't really know what came of her. Maybe she's still up there. After my third route up, I was pretty tired so Kay and I walked back down to the shop where we gave our harnesses back and took a look around Railay. We had the option to go back with the boat at 1:30 or stay until 5:30 and go then. We wanted to see Railay and hang out at the beach so we chose the 5:30 option.
After our climbing adventure, Kay and I walked around to find a decent looking restaurant. Every time we mentioned going to Krabi and Railay, all of our friends and co-workers kept saying "dont eat in Railay, you will get sick. Everyone who eats there gets sick." We ate in Railay. No splishy splashy. No fuss. After lunch, we met up with Stephen and Sara and hung out at the beach. The water was once again as warm as a hot tub with it's jets turned off. The sand was super fine which was nice for ten seconds until you realized that it was going to get everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
After the beach, we just did a lot of relaxing and exploring. We walked all along the east coast, around all the shops and looked at all of the different resorts that you could get to. We bought a dry-bag for future travels and back home since the rain is so sudden and torrential.
After a quick iced tea and iced coffee break, we decided to take a walk down the west beach to find the hidden path to Tonsai. Tonsai is a small village/ beach in the same bay as Railay. It is completely off the grid and only has power from 6 pm to 6 am which they get from generators. Tonsai is where all of the dirty backpacker/climbers stay because it is much cheaper. It took us a very long time to find the path because it was hidden behind a bunch of giant boulders on the beach. The walk to Tonsai was what many would call treacherous. Small dirt path pinned up against one of the big walls on Railay and the water. Tonsai has some world class climbing as well, and we actually saw bolts, anchors, and climbers all over the walls as we walked up the beach. One of the other local guides that was at the same wall as us was there climbing with one of his friends (this is the guy who I called the Thai version of Eric Verdon. Seriously, exact look alike except...Thai). The beach of Tonsai is nothing special at all. Small, kind of dirty, and the when the tide is out, you simply cannot swim in it. Most of the resorts in Tonsai are way up away from the beach so we had to do some more walking to see any. Nothing really worth mentioning was up there, resorts, a few climbing schools, and a restaurant or two. One thing we did find out was that one of the bigger negatives of Tonsai is that if the tide is in, you can't use the hidden trail so you are stuck on the beach unless you can find a boat willing to take you to Railay.
Once we were finished with Tonsai, we walked back over to Railay and hung out until it was time to go back. There were only two other climbers who joined us for the trip back to Krabi and they didn't even go all the way to Krabi, so it was just Kay and I in the Song Tao for a little while. The song tao dropped us right outside our hostel.
That night, we met up with Stephen and Sara again and had dinner at a place called Mr. Krabi. The food was delicious and I had the best Massaman curry I've had since getting here. And that's saying a lot. The Thais know massaman. We spent a little while at the night market and then went back to our hostel for a much needed rest.
Sorry this post took so long, but here it is, I hope you enjoy. We keep saying we will try to stay on top of this blog but it really is a difficult thing to do! Despite what many of you guys think, we actually do have a ton of work to do during the week. Teaching children a second language while their parents expect results like it's their first language isn't a walk in the park.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Krabi Town
Saturday May 30th 5:30AM
Our alarm clock goes off waaay too early for a saturday but we were told that an early bus leaves NST at 6:20 so we get up and manage to make our way to the bus station. We used nicks big green knapsack to pack for the both of us (climbing shoes, running shoes, beach towels, clothes and toiletries) so I got to/had to drive the bike with Nick and the giant knapsack on the back. I'll just say it was a rocky, unbalanced start but we were both pretty impressed with how I managed to figure it out by the time we got there. Luckily traffic is non-existant that early on saturday mornings!
When we got to the station there was another teacher already there and we bought our tickets for 200 baht each. That was when they managed to tell us that the bus won't leave until 8:00AM. Great. The other teachers pulled up right at 6:20 and we got to give them the bad news. So now we have an hour and a half to kill in an area of town we don't know at all and chances are if the bus isn't full at 8, we still won't be leaving. Welcome to Thailand!
This is where the picture of fried eggs in a plastic bag came from. We were starving and ended up wandering around the area looking for something that was A) gluten free and B) recognizable. This is probably the most adventurous we have been in terms of food since we've been here due to how hungry we were. We got our usual Thai Tea (an amazing iced tea with lots of milk and it's bright orange) and then I found some green jelly coconut covered balls with crunchy centers that were actually really yummy! Finally we settled for crispy rice cakes and fried eggs in a bag. Yum.
At 7:45 we all climbed in the van, hoping that this would be a hint to the driver that we are still expecting to leave at 8! Luckily a few thais showed up (they probably knew the van leaves at 8...) and us 8 teachers and 6 thais were stuffed into this van. Thank goodness it has air conditioning! The drive takes about 3 hours since we stop to pick up/drop off people along the way and we did get a bathroom break.
Krabi Town is a small town on a river about 45 min long boat ride away from the famous Railay beach. It's definitely more touristy than NST which was apparent by the amount of white people we saw and the level of english the shop and restaurant owners have. That and the fact that every second shop/restaurant had rooms for rent above it. It sits on a little river and is surrounded by beautiful cliffs that Krabi is known for.
Upon arriving in Krabi Town (the bus dropped us off just around the corner from our hotel!) we split up with the rest of the teachers who were going to Ao Nang (a small beach town closer to railay). We checked into the hostel which was alright. We probably won't be staying there again because it was a little run down and had what looked like mold on the ceiling... but it has A/C, private room and hot water so not terrible. The owner was also a super nice american guy who gave us advice on what to do and booked us our rock climbing trip on Sunday. We went out to get lunch and had our first bad meal in all of Thailand... we made the mistake of ordering Pad Thai on a southern coastal town and it was so fishy neither of us could eat much of it. We awkwardly payed and tried to leave before they noticed and we went accross the street and got delicious smoothies/bubble tea to tied us over. We did a little bit of touristy shopping (I got two pairs of cute little earrings for 40 baht! >50 cents) and waited for time to pass so that we could go climb the temple when it wasn't in the blistering heat of noon. We got a song tao to bring us up to the temple which was about 3 KM north of town and it felt pretty great to be able to not only negotiate a fair price, but be able to counter his offer in thai!! Living in the country you are touring really is the way to go. You should all try it.
The base of the temple was interesting. There were monks walking around but also tourists in very inappropriate clothing choices. There were people worshiping and praying and there were people selling lottery tickets. Nick said Buddha would be rolling in his grave.
Tiger temple got it's name with two different legends: 1) a giant tiger took up the base of the temple as it's home 2) some guy discovered the temple which had been taken up as home by a family of tigers who left some footprints inside one of the buildings. Either way there were huge tiger statues all over the place. The staircase leading up to the top of the mountain seemed rather unintimidating just nestled into the forest until you saw the sign "1237 steps to the top". You can see the pretty cool pictures on facebook along with the picture that very accurately summarizes how I felt about half way up the mountain. It was hot and sweaty. Everything we were both wearing was sweat completely through but Nick (my boy scout) wisely packed gatorade along with our water and we both survived. The view from the top was incredible and well worth the hike. The way down felt super easy until your legs started convulsing, like trembling to the point where we had both hands on the rails and were taking it one step at a time. Felt pretty great to be back on solid ground and even better to take a cold shower back at our room. Never would have though I would turn off a hot water heater if I had the option!!
Thankfully our dinner on Saturday was delicious and our experience of bad meals is still left at 1. Nick continued the trend of ordering something spicy every where we go and then 50% enjoyed and 50% suffered through his curry chicken while I had sweet and sour chicken which is quickly becoming my favourite, how can you not love fresh juicy pineapple in everything! After dinner we explored the night market for dessert. What is a parking lot during the day becomes a crazy mix of locals eating dinner, tourists pushing their way around and stalls and carts set up with everything from cheap clothes, shoes, pad thai, popsicles, frogs and ice cream. We have been slowly perfecting our thai phrase for "I'm allergic to wheat. Without soy sauce. Wheat flour. Rice flour." So with this in our repetoir we safely had coconut ice cream with caramel sauce and rice cakes with caramel sauce. Both so yummy! Then we sat down at a small bar and had mojitos. The owner of the place was an american and he brought us jenga and connect four to play. I'm sure it was just to get us to stick around and spend more money (which kinda worked because we did have a second drink) but it was also pretty cool to be sitting in a bar in the middle of a market playing wooden jenga. It is also worth mentioning that I kicked Nicks butt at both.
So this was what we managed to cram into one day here on our long weekend. Needless to say we crashed pretty early since we were getting picked up at 7:30 the next morning for rock climbing. That story is to come... send Nick angry messages if it's not posted soon.
Our alarm clock goes off waaay too early for a saturday but we were told that an early bus leaves NST at 6:20 so we get up and manage to make our way to the bus station. We used nicks big green knapsack to pack for the both of us (climbing shoes, running shoes, beach towels, clothes and toiletries) so I got to/had to drive the bike with Nick and the giant knapsack on the back. I'll just say it was a rocky, unbalanced start but we were both pretty impressed with how I managed to figure it out by the time we got there. Luckily traffic is non-existant that early on saturday mornings!
When we got to the station there was another teacher already there and we bought our tickets for 200 baht each. That was when they managed to tell us that the bus won't leave until 8:00AM. Great. The other teachers pulled up right at 6:20 and we got to give them the bad news. So now we have an hour and a half to kill in an area of town we don't know at all and chances are if the bus isn't full at 8, we still won't be leaving. Welcome to Thailand!
This is where the picture of fried eggs in a plastic bag came from. We were starving and ended up wandering around the area looking for something that was A) gluten free and B) recognizable. This is probably the most adventurous we have been in terms of food since we've been here due to how hungry we were. We got our usual Thai Tea (an amazing iced tea with lots of milk and it's bright orange) and then I found some green jelly coconut covered balls with crunchy centers that were actually really yummy! Finally we settled for crispy rice cakes and fried eggs in a bag. Yum.
At 7:45 we all climbed in the van, hoping that this would be a hint to the driver that we are still expecting to leave at 8! Luckily a few thais showed up (they probably knew the van leaves at 8...) and us 8 teachers and 6 thais were stuffed into this van. Thank goodness it has air conditioning! The drive takes about 3 hours since we stop to pick up/drop off people along the way and we did get a bathroom break.
Krabi Town is a small town on a river about 45 min long boat ride away from the famous Railay beach. It's definitely more touristy than NST which was apparent by the amount of white people we saw and the level of english the shop and restaurant owners have. That and the fact that every second shop/restaurant had rooms for rent above it. It sits on a little river and is surrounded by beautiful cliffs that Krabi is known for.
Upon arriving in Krabi Town (the bus dropped us off just around the corner from our hotel!) we split up with the rest of the teachers who were going to Ao Nang (a small beach town closer to railay). We checked into the hostel which was alright. We probably won't be staying there again because it was a little run down and had what looked like mold on the ceiling... but it has A/C, private room and hot water so not terrible. The owner was also a super nice american guy who gave us advice on what to do and booked us our rock climbing trip on Sunday. We went out to get lunch and had our first bad meal in all of Thailand... we made the mistake of ordering Pad Thai on a southern coastal town and it was so fishy neither of us could eat much of it. We awkwardly payed and tried to leave before they noticed and we went accross the street and got delicious smoothies/bubble tea to tied us over. We did a little bit of touristy shopping (I got two pairs of cute little earrings for 40 baht! >50 cents) and waited for time to pass so that we could go climb the temple when it wasn't in the blistering heat of noon. We got a song tao to bring us up to the temple which was about 3 KM north of town and it felt pretty great to be able to not only negotiate a fair price, but be able to counter his offer in thai!! Living in the country you are touring really is the way to go. You should all try it.
The base of the temple was interesting. There were monks walking around but also tourists in very inappropriate clothing choices. There were people worshiping and praying and there were people selling lottery tickets. Nick said Buddha would be rolling in his grave.
Tiger temple got it's name with two different legends: 1) a giant tiger took up the base of the temple as it's home 2) some guy discovered the temple which had been taken up as home by a family of tigers who left some footprints inside one of the buildings. Either way there were huge tiger statues all over the place. The staircase leading up to the top of the mountain seemed rather unintimidating just nestled into the forest until you saw the sign "1237 steps to the top". You can see the pretty cool pictures on facebook along with the picture that very accurately summarizes how I felt about half way up the mountain. It was hot and sweaty. Everything we were both wearing was sweat completely through but Nick (my boy scout) wisely packed gatorade along with our water and we both survived. The view from the top was incredible and well worth the hike. The way down felt super easy until your legs started convulsing, like trembling to the point where we had both hands on the rails and were taking it one step at a time. Felt pretty great to be back on solid ground and even better to take a cold shower back at our room. Never would have though I would turn off a hot water heater if I had the option!!
Thankfully our dinner on Saturday was delicious and our experience of bad meals is still left at 1. Nick continued the trend of ordering something spicy every where we go and then 50% enjoyed and 50% suffered through his curry chicken while I had sweet and sour chicken which is quickly becoming my favourite, how can you not love fresh juicy pineapple in everything! After dinner we explored the night market for dessert. What is a parking lot during the day becomes a crazy mix of locals eating dinner, tourists pushing their way around and stalls and carts set up with everything from cheap clothes, shoes, pad thai, popsicles, frogs and ice cream. We have been slowly perfecting our thai phrase for "I'm allergic to wheat. Without soy sauce. Wheat flour. Rice flour." So with this in our repetoir we safely had coconut ice cream with caramel sauce and rice cakes with caramel sauce. Both so yummy! Then we sat down at a small bar and had mojitos. The owner of the place was an american and he brought us jenga and connect four to play. I'm sure it was just to get us to stick around and spend more money (which kinda worked because we did have a second drink) but it was also pretty cool to be sitting in a bar in the middle of a market playing wooden jenga. It is also worth mentioning that I kicked Nicks butt at both.
So this was what we managed to cram into one day here on our long weekend. Needless to say we crashed pretty early since we were getting picked up at 7:30 the next morning for rock climbing. That story is to come... send Nick angry messages if it's not posted soon.
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