Krabi

Glap ik! Back again! Suprise, after Cambodia I was not done traveling for this month. One more trip we had scheduled was Krabi! Rock climbing in Railay, Krabi has been on the top of my checklist since I arrived here. Amazingly yet again however, learning nothing from our unplanned Cambodia trip, we didn't plan anything this trip either. We bought tickets for Thursday night from Bangkok to Krabi, we had a suggestion for a hotel, knew we'd have to haggle for a rock-climbing deal there, and needed to find a ticket back! So Thursday arrives, we all get to the bus station (Amazing considering our taxi diver was thoroughly lost...we told him "Oh! It's here, turn right." and he says, "You were going HERE?! I was taking you somewhere else!") Our bus was late so we figured we'd try again to see if we could get return tickets, last time the counter lady had just said flat out "No. Cannot." This time we tried again and got tickets. Brenda and me had to run back to the bus and managed to hop on just before it pulled out. Sitting on the bus relaxing however, we realized a mistake. The ticket lady had re-issued us the tickets we already had, we had TWO trips TO Krabi now, and still no ticket back. Woops. The bus ride otherwise was un-eventful, we all slept great and woke up in the islands!
When we got there we got a very helpful tuk-tuk driver that helped us find everything, hotel, return tickets, and a climbing package for a half day at Railay. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing on the beach *sunburning* doing some quality people-watching. Beaches here are practically European, old women are usually topless, if they have bathing suits they rarely cover enough, and its fun to guess where everyone's from. The guest house was great, at first we were worried it was a little sketch and didn't know what we were getting into...from the outside it looked like a Chinese restaurant but they had rooms upstairs that were perfect! We got stuck in a rainstorm on our way back from the beach and the owners of the guesthouse had a good laugh looking at us. Their guard asked to take a picture with us and then handed us some bananas while we dried off under the eaves so we didn't get their lobby wet. The next day we took a long-tail boat *canoe with a motor* to Railay island where we rock climbed! The Thai's on the boat ride over with us were our belay's when we rock climbed later and super entertaining. One asked me when I strapped my harness on if I had climbed before. I told him I did back at school but usually just indoor courses. He said, "Oooh, outdoor rock-climbing very difficult...no rope!" I stared at him, then he says, "Joke! Joke!" Hahaha. They spoke this local islander language that sounded sorta like if Bob Marley spoke Thai, "Jah Mai!" haha. We were allowed to climb anywhere there were ropes hanging down basically. Lots of the climbs took longer because they were SO high. Most weren't too difficult but your muscles got super tired about halfway. When you got to top there were amazing views though, my belay 'Raam' helped me strap my camera to my harness before going up so I could snap a few photos :) All in all it was an epic trip and totally worth the chaos and bus rides there and back (The return trip was probably one of our grossest bus rides, but we were so tired and sunburned it was easy to sleep through).