Railay

From Koh Sukorn we made our way uneventfully to Railay for the second half of the relaxing in Thailand phase of our trip. Railay is famous for it's beautiful beaches set amidst a landscape of steep karsts and jungle. It is also really popular with rock climbers, the limestone cliffs seem to be their ideal playground.

It really was beautiful. The beaches were great to run on and though we didn't do any climbing ourselves it was fun to see other people up there hanging around. The only unfortunate thing was the rain. Throughout the week the rain got progressively worse until, at the end, we were holed up in our room reading all day while rain pounded down around us. To go outside was to be instantly soaked, and there was no sun to dry our clothes. Anyway, more about the good times.

Meghan and Andrea, in the rain, with the beautiful karsts.

A lovely stroll, on a lovely beach

A happy couple

Aside from going for runs along the beach (which was surprisingly fun, considering we were just going back and forth, back and forth over and over again), we drank wonderful coffee, had good chats, went for a few swims, and had a couple day trips.

Run, run, run

The water was so nice and blue!

The gang of five spent a day snorkelling on an island tour which took us to four or five nearby islands. We managed to have reasonably good weather for the entirety of our adventure with the downpours holding off until we were (nearly) home to our hotel rooms. The snorkelling was good and we saw lots of fun fish. It was a sad farewell to Pamela and Dave, who left us behind for a few remaining days on Railay...the gang was now down to three. We went to Koh Phi Phi for the day and soaked up glorious sun, ate yummy curries, and enjoyed the mass amounts of people that were here--a little more lively than Railay.

Finally, it was our turn to leave, leaving Andrea behind on her own for one extra day...more sad goodbyes! Little did we know that it would be such an adventure to get to Bangkok...