CAMPING ON TONSAI

This is part two of my Valentine's weekend traveling, in which we camped out on Tonsai Beach. You can read about our romantic evening on Railay in the previous post.

It was our buddy Jason's birthday, and he wanted to do some camping and climbing on Tonsai. We joined him for the evening, but didn't do any climbing since we were already exhausted from our own climbing adventure on Railay. Now, we're not usually one for camping, but it's something I really wanted to try whist in Thailand so I found a bargain tent at Tesco for $400 baht, and we only had to pay the Chill Out Bar 100 baht to pitch our tent in the back. Those prices work for me!


Tent city Walkway behind the Chill Out bar leading back to where Tent city is. Note the beer bottles as path markers. #alwaysrecycle


Cheers to my friend Stacy for some of these photos! Tonsai is a ten minute longtail boat ride from Ao Nang, and is just across the way from Railay West. You can actually walk between the two at low tide, or climb through the jungle for about 20-30 minutes (at your own risk) to get from one to the other. Tonsai is much more rustic than Railay, and caters to the backpacker set and the athletic climber type. It's very hippie-d out, which means you either want to stay there for no longer than 48 hours or you'll get sucked in and want to stay forever; the latter usually being the dread-locked, harem pants-ed traveler seeking spiritual enlightenment. It is a great place to get away for a few days however, there's no cars and few distractions. Days are mostly activity based - playing cards, reading a book, swimming, drinking, kayaking, climbing, or lounging around.

Here are a few more from previous Tonsai visits (we've been about twice before)





It's a beautiful beach when the tide is in (i.e. morning - mid afternoon) and we hope to go back one more time once school gets out for a kayak trip. Stay tuned!

ROMANTIC ON RAILAY & CLIMBING ADVENTURES

For Valentine's Day this year, Alex and I headed over to Railay Beach for a romantic getaway. The following night, we had plans to camp at Tonsai Bay for our friend Jason's birthday, so we wanted to stay nearby, but also treat ourselves to a nice resort and play tourist for the evening. And boy, were we impressed! Railay is a very small peninsula off the coast of Krabi, accessible only by boat. West Railay is arguably the best beach I've been on in Thailand, it's completely surrounded by limestone cliffs (karsts, for those geology buffs out there) and it has spectacular sunset views. The beach is clean, the sand fine, and it's not overly crowded. . . It's perfection. Railay East is more of the hotel, restaurant and shop side, but is also fascinating because the tides are so drastic; at noon the waves are literally crashing on the sidewalk and you're getting soaked, six hours later it's a five minute walk out to barely dip your toes in.

But I digress, we stayed at a really nice resort called Sunrise Tropical on Railay East. (No, we didn't get paid to promote them, I just enjoyed my stay so much that I'd recommend it to anyone. Cheers to great customer service!) I was honestly sold by the welcome: we were given mysterious albeit delicious green fruit juice and a cool, lemony scented towel to wipe the travel sweat off. Our room was also incredible, with a giant balcony, plush robes and even a bathtub! You might laugh about my enthusiasm over the tub, but luxury is hard to come by on our teachers salary, and a tub is pretty rare to see in our usual Thailand hotels.


They even put our name on a welcome board! *easily impressed* Just outside the hotel at high tide Thailand loves everything tacky. We had a cheeky beer and sunset viewing on Railay West.


The next morning I was dying to check out this climb up to a view point that I had seen with my parents the last time we were here, but none of us were wearing proper footwear. This visit to Railay I dragged my sneakers the whole way, and I'm so glad I did.





We had to climb like this for 15 minutes to reach solid footing and the path to the view point! We were quite confident we could handle it though because we saw a Dad and his 10 year old coming down from it and he said it was easy. No, I wouldn't say it was "easy", but it was such a fun climb, and there were plenty of places to grab hold of and put your feet. Neither myself nor Alex are climbers in the slightest, so it was a bit challenging at times and we had to get our bodies into some weird positions to climb to the top. And at the end we were sweaty and covered in red clay but it was some of the most fun I've ever had. And was the view ever worth it . . .





It was incredible . . . these pictures are postcard worthy but they still don't do it justice.


After that we got lost in the jungle for a little bit trying to find the elusive "lagoon" promised on the map.





I can't even begin to describe how high up the trees and cliffs surrounding us were. At one point, it felt like we were in Jurassic Park; note the prehistoric-looking tree we came across. We did find the lagoon, it's the small blue part hiding in the photo of the two giant cliffs above. We didn't venture down though because it looked intensely steep and at this point we were still wondering if we'd make it down from the first climb up. Maybe next time!

Stay tuned for part two: camping on Tonsai the following night!

IN AND AROUND THUNG SONG: CHINESE TEMPLE

In honor of the recent Chinese New Year celebrations, here are some photos I've been meaning post from one of the (most impressive) Chinese temples in town. I surprisingly managed to find some information online about it - impressive because probably 95% of Thung Song signs are Thai only, the only English we see is for Tesco, the schools, and arrows pointing to the next towns over. I happened to google the cave nearby which led me to a website outlining Thung Song mountain biking adventures in fairly decent English. 

        The temple is called the Sam Por Kong Foundation, which is a Chinese word meaning "triple gem". It's the center of faith for the Chinese descendants in Thung Song and nearby districts. The statue is of Kuan Im - the Goddess of Mercy - statue, which was erected in 1996, "on the auspicious occasion of the Golden Jubilee of H.M. the King's Accession to the Throne." The statue is 19 meters high, making it among the highest Kuan Im statues in Thailand. The smaller statues of a girl and a boy named "Long Ni" and "Chung Chai Kong Jue" respectively, reflect their supporting roles in helping human beings and animals. 


 


The last two photos are me in front of the statue for size comparison, and my friend Vicki in a crystal ball, respectively. The temple is only 2k from my apartment so I'm lucky enough to drive by it often! It's one of the more interesting things I've stumbled upon in Thung Song. Enjoy!

ROAD TRIPPING

Last weekend we spontaneously decided to road trip to Koh Lanta. Now, if you know anything about Thailand, you might know that koh means island - and since our preferred method of transport here is the scooter . . . That's right folks, we decided on the grand adventure of scooting to an island!

The whole journey only took about 3 hours and cost 100 baht in gas. Add to that 50 baht for copious snacks and another 50 for the drive-on ferry and you have a grand total of 200 baht for the day - or $7! A mighty fine deal, especially considering friends of ours came the following day, took twice as long and spent twice as much via minivan. Plus, we were able to avoid the incessant pick up stops, caterwauling Thai music, and jam packed seating arrangements typical of every Thai minivan ride. We got to make a day of it instead, hitting the open road to check out the sights and sounds of rural Thailand and cruising in the sunlight.





While we managed to make it the whole way without getting lost, (partly because there were only three major roads, and partly due to our genius and well planned friend Richie who calculated how long each leg of the journey was and matched it to his speedometer. Cheers, Richie!) we weren't without mishap. As I was driving, my bike started to feel a bit wobbly. I thought I was imagining things until I remembered that about 20k back I hit a major bump. I pulled over and sure enough, I had a flat tire. Luckily, across the street was a mechanic / motorbike salesman / tire guy or whatever you want to call his multipurpose shop. I actually pulled over because I saw the universal Thai sign for that kind of shop: a pile of discarded tires on the side of the road. That's one of my favorite things about Thailand, bike fixer guys are a dime a dozen - there's literally one every 5k at least.





Note the ubiquitous discarded tires I was referring to above. The guy pulled a four inch nail from my tire, so I'm glad I stopped when I did! The whole affair only lasted ten minutes and cost me 120 baht - $5. Much nicer than in the states where that would have taken two hours and cost me 120 dollars!





I'm not going to lie, bums and lower backs were significantly aching once we arrived. Luckily, that's nothing a few paracetamol (Tylenol) and a $10 massage on the beach can't change.





We were able to have a nice four day holiday because the schools shut down all week save Monday due to the protest situation in Bangkok. Side note - the south of Thailand is a big supporter of the movement, and apparently politics and education are not separated here. But I digress . . .

Koh Lanta was a lovely spot. A bit pricey - but we stayed near the beach (not in those huts, I wish!) It as so nice to have our own scooters to tool around as we please. We pretty much kept to one main beach / bar - the Pirate Bar on Long Beach (Phra-Ae), owned and operated by some sweet Reggae men. The boys played pool there during the day while the girls soaked up the sun, as we do. We went to a cool beach party at Korner Bar the last night, but I didn't grab any photos. There was still a lot we didn't get to see, but I have plans to set up base on Koh Lanta again for my birthday weekend in March because it's pretty close to the Emerald Cave I've been dying to get to! (The one featured on The Bachelor, shame on me.)

All in all it was a great weekend. Koh Lanta, I can't wait to see you again!