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!

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!