Guro and Caroline Blog

railay and new year

hello again...

so we left koh tao on the 27th with joanne and phil heading over to krabbi with the promise of better (due to the weather) but more expensive diving. arriving in krabbi with bulging backpacks, our christmas fins and snorkels strapped to the sides, we were again told this part of thailand is very busy and we wont get rooms anywhere. not a problem in krabbi but next day we decided to go to railay instead of phi phi... climbing instead of diving. joanne and phil headed off to another beach! marc and i chilled out in a bar in railay whilst michelle and guro did a huge effort in finding us somewhere to stay - being very jealous of a guy we met on the boat who very cheaply just hung up his hammock (v jealous until it rained later that is!) we ended up in clean cute little bungalows with double beds on the floor and mossie nets :) but we seem to be here in peak peak peak season and cant really afford them and food! we're happily ignoring this. the weather is slightly better here, not that its ever really bad! we climbed the next day with our thai guide gop which was great but very busy with ropes everywhere as this is a really popular climbers gettaway. we recovered for a day, swam, snorkelled, got eaten by what guro tells me are baby jellyfish and waited for a couple of hours for lunch (its a muslim holiday this week so all places are understaffed. we thought its was just island time) and then climbed again on new years eve. we headed to a differet spot where it was just us, a canadian couple, our guide and a bunch of peanut butter thieving monkeys. it was amazing. easy climbs but so satisfying. we got lunch at about 5pm so our pre-new years party knap turned into a pre-new years party beer... the staff at our hotel are lovely, gave us party hats and free food before we bailed on them to chill out at our climbing place with (you guessed it) more buckets of alcohol! local whiskey this time (song san, mmmmmm) guro, michelle and i watched in new years here (marc heading to bed about 10pm) with a fireshow and some fireworks but no countdown or big ben :( we even forgot to sing auld langs syne! great way to see in new year. we heard today about bombs having gone off in bangkok - a bit of a shock. we're heading there on an overnight bus to get back there tomorrow but we head straight to the airport. next update should be from oz!!!

posted by Caroline @ 06:45