[Khao Lak to Railay beach,Thailand] Finally we are leaving Khao Lak. It’s been nice being in one spot for a week. Having our own fridge and being able to have cereal for breakfast has been a novelty. It’s not a bad little town,  a characterless strip though and the weather has been total rubbish so can’t say much for the beach. Lots and lots of Germans around including restauranteurs and dive operators.

We were picked up from our hotel at 8am and the minivan took another half hour picking up people from lots of different resorts and then pfaffing with getting all the luggage on the roof. Sim and I are still chuffed that our bags are almost always the smallest.

We had been told that we would arrive in Railay by 11am, but at around 11 the minivan pulled into… surprise surprise a restaurant. Sim strangely is also suffering with motion sickness. It must be something about the minivans as the roads aren’t very windy and I have also been suffering.

Over the course of the next 2 hours about a dozen other minibuses from various places pulled into the roadside restaurant and offloaded their tourists. After what seemed like ages we were amongst the last to be reshuffled and herded onto another minivan for a 15 minute drive to the pier. Can you believe it after all that waiting, we were only a short drive to the pier where we could catch a longtail boat to Railay!

The boatride over to Railay bay or Railay East couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes. We pulled into the muddy mangrovey bay, hopped out and immediately made our way over to Railey West (the side with the nice beach and stunning limestone cliffs) for some lunch.

Our lunch spot  was a place that Sim and his mates had dined at many times when they had come climbing here some 13 years ago. Sim was having a fine old time reminiscing. A lot has changed since then and since he last visited 10 years ago with Jackie & Shane and the evil bitch.

After a nice relaxed lunch we set about the usual tedious task of finding a place to lay our heads for the night. We enquired at one of the beach front resorts but at 2000 Baht (+/- £40) a night for a room, we moved on inland, waay inland. We found a nice little wooden bungalow for 300 Baht in a pleasant setting up against the jungle and the cliffs. There are some serious wood borer or something munching away in the wooden columns though. We could hear them gnawing away. Dont know how long these wooden places will last. Guess that is why they are building new concrete ones.  There are also loads of cats in this place! We counted half a dozen on the walk to our bungalow alone. Some cute friendly kittens too. Not just by us but also all around the peninsula.

We plonked our stuff down and hit the bed for a well deserved afternoon nap. We were both completely knocked out for a couple of hours. We really should have pulled the mozzie net down though as in predictable fashion Sim got munched. The mozzie that feasted on him must have been a monster as the size of the welts that came up were humungous.  Seriously they were the size of an English penny. Poor guy. He has such juicy blood. As usual, I was left well alone as the mutant mozzie chose the tastier option.

[Pictures: Extra passenger 🙂 ? Our little hut]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi