Railay: Hippies Vs. Yuppies

So, lets be honest. I can't function off of three days with a total of 14 hours of sleep. I get cranky, start to cry and generally want to hurt Koranin for putting me in this situation. This is how our trip to the south of Thailand (aka paradise) began. No need to give too many details just be warned that me, lindsay and koranin on no sleep traveling together= screaming, fighting, crying and people on the public bus telling us to hush.



We arrived in Railay after calming ourselves down at the ferry dock with a rousing game of hearts. Hearts has been known to break up tense situations all trip. I really should correct this sentence and say that it wasn't a ferry ride rather a longboat. Longboats are exactly what they say" long wooden boats that fit about 20 people if they are crammed or eight comfortably. We boarded the boat in Krabi and immediately were surrounded by small bays with large monolithic limestone cliffs everywhere. It was amazing. We passed a few that had exclusive resorts on them and turned a corner to see our long stretch of white sand and knew we were at Railay. When we got off the boat we followed a British couple to their hotel to see if we could get a room. Bad news: Lonely planet undershot the price of the room by about 2000 baht (57 USD). We wandered around the island for about an hour with packs on our backs looking for a hotel until we finally decided we were wasting out rime at this amazing beach when we could just find a hotel and get to swimming. We settled on a fairly nice one after haggling the bell boy about price for a good ten minutes.



Immediately we were in the water and off on our adventure. The bay we were in was full of families, European couples, young travelers and a few older couples. We decided to swim over to the next bay thinking it was a really exclusive resort we could sneak into. We swam (read: floated in salt water) over to the next bay and were immediately greeted by three young guys. Two from Holland and one from Iowa (didn't know people in Iowa travelled out of the US). They told us we actually could have walked over but we didn't care. As we got out of the water we realized we were not at an exclusive secluded resort bay but rather a hippie commune. The beach was lined with hammocks, bars, Bob Marley posters and music and marijuana "peace cakes." Men and women of all ethnicity's sported dreads and pretty much everyone wore Thai fishing pants and scarves. Sweet! Time to explore.



The three young guys on the beach let us know of a cool rock climbing school up on a "road" parallel to the beach. (Railay actually has no roads only walking streets and dirt paths). Railay is famous for it's rock climbing and we definitely were in the market for a good school. This one offered a trip called "solo climbing" which featured a full day on the boat with stops at easy spots to boulder up cliffs and jump off into the water. Cliff jumping, boats, snorkeling, lunch and English speaking friends? Sounded good to us and we set out to find the school.



After scouring the beach front we saw no sign of Wee's Climbing school. Finally we realized (with some help) that we needed to venture onto the dirt paths and further back into Tonsai Beach (the hippie beach). Although we were barefoot we decided it wouldn't be too bad since everyone was pretty much barefoot or half naked over here. As we are walking along the 400 m dirt road we spot tents in the jungle as well some small bamboo huts that didn't look too inviting. Once we reached the road we were surprised to see an actual little city (read: hippie commune) back in the jungle. Most hostels and guest houses had pot leaves on their logo and advertised peace cake and flame throwing parties. We really wanted to get a look at this place at night. We also spotted a "craiglist" board on the middle of the path that said things like "lost sunglasses last week please return them to the Chill Out lounge- I'll be here ONLY for one more month."





We finally found the rock climbing school, got good vibes from them and booked our trip for the next day (more on that in the next blog). We had to swim back over to our beach so we set out on our journey home taking note to return for the parties and some quality people watching that evening. When we got back to our beach we were greeted by yuppies with fancy cameras, pedicures on the beach and really beautiful European couples. No dreads or pot, no tents or stinky bungalows. It was a whole different world on our beach.



After we had the most amazing dinner of my time in Thailand (mango chili shrimp salad and garlic and fresh pepper squid) we decided to try to make it back over to Tonsai to check out the scene at night. One problem: we weren't about to swim over to the next bay at 10 pm and the tide was still too high to get there any other way. We had no clue how to get across the giants rocks in our way. We poked around with our headlamps but were still clueless. We thought we found a path but it turned out to be a creepy cave with a couple purses in it and empty beer bottles.



As we were heading back to our beach feeling defeated and ready for some cold beer, we stumbled upon two girls heading toward Tonsai (or rather they stumbled upon us). They drunkenly said they would show us the path and we decided why not. They said they had been "livingat Tonsai for a while" and had made the trek across the rocks many times. One of the girls was a petite swede with beer in her hand and the other was a college grad (or drop out) from Boulder with roots in Wisconsin. They were just drunk enough to feel confident about walking into the woods/rocks at night but not too drunk where they would fall.



The path was completely hidden and we had to start climbing up it with assistance from a rope. Considering the two girls were jabbering the whole time about some hoola hooper they didn't like, we didn't even have time to realize we were ascending a giant rock and coming back down the other side. We got to Tonsai beach by crawling through two tightly wedged rocks and jumping down into soft sand to see the waves crashing at our feet. Lindsay and I were fine however Kor looked like he was an overworked race horse in 100 degree heat. That was just the beginning of his exertion struggles.

Once over onto Tonsai beach we started out at the Viking Bar which consists of bamboo mats and pillows in the sand, reggae music and hammocks with hippies everywhere. We had a couple of beers and watched the stars and discussed what type of people actually choose to stay on a beach like this for months at a time. We decided they were mostly trying to escape the real world (who isn't these days though?). Next stop was the big party back in the jungle. We basically just followed the sound of live music until we happened upon the bar stock full of Europeans and Americans listening to a pretty decent live thai band.

Without being at the party for more than five minutes we immediately noticed an outlandishly drunk or high man running around dancing, singing and generally looking in whichever direction with glazed over eyes. After a few mins he progressed up to the stage area as most drunk people do. On the stage there was a slack rope set up for climbers to practice walking across and improve balance. He decided this rope should actually be used as a "slingshot" and tried to convince everyone he would sling himself over to the next island. It was hilarious and interesting.

We made our way back to the rocks where we were geared up to make the trek back to yuppie beach. It wasn't as easy on the way back without our jabbering drunkies. We encountered a giant spider as well as some rustling in the bushes. We also saw a few other walkers and were delighted that other people roamed this path at 11 pm. They seemed indifferent about us and offered us no advice or explanations for bush rustling.

We made it back to yuppie beach in one piece with lots of laughter about the evening. The next day we set out on another amazing adventure that will have to have a blog entry of its own. Railay was such a great place to start our trip because it really introduced us to the variety of people that we have encountered in Thailand. Many young disillusioned or lost people come to Thailand for the cheap prices and good parties. Plenty of families come for the beaches and endless activities. Older men come for pleasure and others (like ourselves) come on their 'tour' of SE Asia. While we loved Railay we are curious to see how things will pan out between pot smoking hippies and yuppies with tanning oil. Can they really both make it work?