Spectacular scenery, sleepy social scene

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  Krabi, Thailand
Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Arrived exhausted in Krabi town and decided in an instant to leave for Railay beach the next morning. It's a small town on the river with a few guesthouses and restaurants simply used as a jumping off point for more spectacular things. We did find a great little Italian though called Bolero, for some post-traumatic journey relief in the shape of pizza, red wine and a live band singing Beatles numbers.

Next morning the cheeky long tail drivers made us wait for two hours to "fill up" the boat otherwise they would have to charge us 200 baht each rather than 150 standard fare (already more than one night's accommodation). Then, when we were called down from the coffee bar they said it was still 200 even though there were now five tourists, two locals and masses of goods loaded onto the tiny boat! We stuffed 150 into their sweaty hands and just threw our bags into the boat in a 'we're not in the mood for this nonsense' kind of way and that did the trick.

The Railay area spreads across East, West, Pranang and Ton Sai beaches and hundreds of awesome rock formations and caves in between. We stayed in cheap cabanas up in the hills and stuck to the less idyllic East beach for cheaper food and drinks, making short 5-10min treks to other beaches for picture perfect swimming and sunbathing. Once there it's hard to believe you're still on the mainland when the whole place feels so cut off from the rest of the world. The long-haired locals lounge in their bar shacks all day and visitors do little more than wander the beaches, explore the caves and occasionally summon enough energy to do a spot of rock climbing or canoeing. We enjoyed the quiet sleepy paradise for a couple of days but definitely felt cabin fever begin to set in by the end of the second day. (Especially in our bug infested cabin which reminded me of the insect box I made in woodwork for a school wildlife project.) Luckily we teamed up with two Dutch girls and there was some good scrambling to be done and fabulous viewpoints from the top of the rocks to keep boredom at bay.

Enough said, here are the pics...

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Arriving at Railay	Railay West beach	A bar shack in the hils	BBQ chef dodging the monsoon rains
Chilling out with new friends	Our insect sanctuary	View from the top	Climbing up to the lagoon
Pranang beach	Pranang beach	A laid back approach to climbing	Railay East
Sunset	Nicola taking the plunge	Sunset with a few Changs	The beach view
The spectacular beach

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