The Beach Party Ends

We prolonged our stay on Ko Lanta as long as possible, not wanting to give up the laidback island lifestyle we were living there.  But other islands beckoned, so eventually we had to go.  Our next stop was Railay, the rock-climbing capital of Thailand. 

So in Railay, we rock-climbed.  The climbing cliffs here are either right on the beach, or in the sea. It’s really quite stunning – and I promised myself I’d never use that word in the travel blog (it’s just so cliché).  Maybe that’s why it’s so popular with climbers…. and why it’s also so popular with non-climbers.  I’m not sure what category we fit into, having climbed 3 times before, but we definitely didn’t want to associate with the newbies.  So, after being reassured by the tour agency that we would get VIP service, we hit the cliffs…. and so did fifty other people.  It was mass chaos.  We also spent a day deep water soloing – for those not in the know this is when you climb with no ropes over water so when you fall, you fall into the water – where Gully climbed to dizzying heights and I didn’t even get up to a meter, due to my panic-inducing fear of free-falling into water.

No pier in Railay - they prefer to make the tourists wade to shore with their bags

Here comes Gully with his luggage

Railay's wild monkey troop - watch out for rabies!

Climbing pandemonium

He fell about 0.2 seconds after this was taken

After Railay we had a few days left in the south of Thailand, so we decided (against our better judgement) to head to party island Ko Phi Phi.  We figured ‘How bad can it be?’.  Sipping cocktails on a party beach for three nights seemed like a fine way to finish our last days in tropical paradise. We found out that this is the place you come if you want to chug buckets (yes, literally, buckets) of cheap thai rum and redbull, try your hand at double dutch skipping or fire twirling on-stage, and engage in questionable activities in the sand with the opposite sex that you are definitely going to regret in the morning. I don’t think I’ll be able to handle the sight of another bright red Westerner with a sweaty face and ridiculous tan lines swigging beer while roasting themselves in the sun for a long time to come.

-E

Even with all the partying, it's still a gorgeous island

PS: We had so much to say about Vietnam that we totally forgot to blog about one of our favourite parts of the trip, our excursion to Halong Bay.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Swimming in the frigid, polluted waters

Ladies from the floating fishing village doing some unknown fishing related task

One of the floating fishing villages in the bay

Fishing village commute?

The beach on Halong Bay where we went rock climbing

Rock climbing