Si's Year Out! (Plus Europe! Plus Morocco!): Railay

The guidebook mentioned some cool sounding caves in a place called Railay, just 30km from Krabi. We assumed we'd be able to get a bus there or something but were surprised to find that, even though Railay is a town on the mainland, there were no roads to the place! The only way to get there was by boat but it looked like a cool place to hang out for a few days so we hopped on a longtail boat with all our stuff and cruised over in search of accommodation!

Railay is on a large peninsula that stretches out into the sea and is surrounded by beautiful beaches on three sides. There are no roads and no public phones (but oddly there are lots of internet cafes), its just like being on an island! Annoyingly there is a 5 star resort slap-bang in the middle of the place! Security was so tight that we couldn't even go in to have a look and a room for one night costs more than I've spent in the last month (infact almost double!).

Naturally we headed for the cheapest accommodation available and were amazed to find bungalows, made mostly of sticks, for 100baht (just under 2 quid) in the most beautiful forest area surrounded by spectacular limestone cliffs. They were smallish so we decided to 'splash out' and get one each. We spent the rest of the day checking out Princess Cave and Diamond Cave. The latter has a couple of big caverns with some spectacular Quartz formations and huge stalagmites and stalactites. However, Princess Cave was much more fun! Inside a large limestone cliff there is a network of caverns that you can scramble about in with only a few ropes and bendy bamboo ladders for help. We entered, armed with a torch, and climbed around to see what we could find. At the end of one tunnel was a cavern full of bats hanging from the ceiling, as soon as we entered and shined the light near them they all went crazy and started flying about all over the place! Another tunnel was so steep it involved many ladders and ended at a hole about 150m up the cliff face right over the sea with a great view all along the beach! The scariest of all was the tunnel that ended with a large hole in the ground...looking down, we realised that we were inside a broken stalactite hanging down from the cliff about 100m over the sea! One slip and I'd have fallen out and down into the deep blue sea...

Railay is a beautiful place, but the reason about 70% of people go there is to climb the huge limestone cliffs that surround it....and even though we had decided that it was too expensive to climb again, we couldn't resist! After bargaining a really good deal on all the gear we set out to do some serious rock climbing! After a few exhausting hours we had conquered three difficult, but rewarding, climbs.

I spent the next day chilling on the beaches and walking through the jungle. I also climbed a cliff to a lookout with views all over the area and almost killed myself climbing a very dangerous route to a lagoon (was worth it though!). That afternoon I went back to Krabi and met up with Andre (he had to go back the evening before to make a call) to start the long trip back to Bangkok....