Probably most of you are sitting in an office somewhere as I type this. As for me, I’m on a beach. Yep, in an internet cafe on a beach, in Railay to be precise in Krabi province down on the Adaman coast in the south west of the country.
I still haven’t quite worked out if I’m on an island or not, I don’t think I am, this is an “isthmus” I believe. Wait a minute, dictionary.com time…….
…… “a narrow strip of land connecting two larger bodies of land” Not a great help, but I think this is connected to the mainland, but it’s impossible to get here from the mainland by any way other than a long-tailed boat, as there’s some of these huge cliffs in the way.
It was a marathon to get here alright, I took the bus overnight form Bangkok which stopped at Surat Thani for a few minutes of waiting at a travel agency where they served us bad coffee and showed “The Beach” which is highly original. Thankfully the local connecting bus came fairly quickly to connect us to Krabi, where after some confusion with tuk-tuk drivers and some other travellers I eventually ended up at the right place for the boat.
I am so tired now that I was falling asleep on the long-tail, and I had the last seat in front of the engine so this was no mean feat. For those of you that have not been on one, basically these things consist of a very high power car engine which they basically mount on a pivot with a long shaft leading to a propellor. Clearly a great idea had by someone at some stage… Some of them have turbo charges and everything and are extremely LOUD!
Anyway I have found myself a little hut just up above the beach, it’s basic but that is what I wanted, with a deck and a hammock on it and a cold shower and toilet inside. I seem to have chickens living underneath my hut which will be ideal when they wake up at sunrise I don’t doubt…
This “island” is a rock climbing mecca, I just took an awesome photo of some French guy falling off an overhang in twilight, he looked quite cool up until that point so it was perfect timing! I will probably indulge in some of that, maybe tomorrow but not so early as I desperately need to sleep, and adjust to the heat that is going on down here at the moment.
As I am now delirious at this point I will sign off!