Sorry about the awful title to today’s entry. It just felt necessary.

For the last couple of days we have spent our time chilling out on the beach and swimming in the warm sea until about 3pm, when it begins to rain. We then pop to our favourite little tapas bar for a late lunch before a walk around the town. Very sophisticated ay?

Well today we decided to do something a little different. We’ve been waking up pretty late recently, and we didn’t get up today until about 10am. An early start if we were at home though I guess. We got all our stuff together and headed down to the beach.

Although we saved ourselves a little money yesterday by only eating dinner, we know we need to make sure we’re eating enough each day. Especially with those 6% bottles of Chang we’ve been drinking in the evenings. It’s no wonder we’ve been getting headaches. Anyway, we popped into a place just off the beach for some French toast and a couple of fruit smoothies.

Once our stomachs were sorted we walked over the road to the longboat ticket office. The Thai longboats line up along the shore of Ao Nang beach all day, ready to take people to and from the surrounding beaches. Today we were heading to the highly rated Railay beach. So having bought our return tickets we sat on a bench and waited for our boat to be ready.

We got in the boat without much fuss. We’d seen a couple of people during the week fall in the sea face first when attempting to jump in their longboat. Honestly, one of the funniest things you will ever see. But we imagined it wouldn’t be that funny were it to happen to us. So thankfully our careful approach was more than worth it.

The boat took us to Railay beach in less than 10 minutes. 10 minutes that felt like 10 hours. I’ve been looking forward to getting in to one of these boats since we first got here. But from the second we got in I was in a bad way. I was certain there was about to be a pile of sick flying back into the drivers face as I attempted to spew over the side of the boat. Obviously I didn’t tell Soph about this until we arrived at our destination. Cos I’m a man. You know.

Once we arrived at Railay everything was ok. The feeling of nausea vanished and we were both ready to hit the beach. Soph has been doing everything she can to soak up as much sun as possible. Following the full body sunburn from our first day here, I have been doing everything I can to stay out of it. Unfortunately Railay beach has about as much shade as the Sahara desert. So our sunbathing couldn’t last too long before the vest made an appearance.

We took a walk down what is aptly known as Walking Street, to find a few restaurants and a 7/11, oh and a tailored suit shop of course. It was then when we realised we had no money on us. We needed to get money out at an ATM before leaving Ao Nang but totally forgot. So much for 3 meals today then.

At the end of Walking Street we found a couple of hidden caves that we knew we had to explore. We climbed through, hooked up the camera onto some hanging rock and took some picture to show you.

See. Told you the vest had made an appearance. You also notice the tan hasn’t as yet. Not like its been 3weeks in constant sunshine though…oh wait…

Having started our little adventure in the caves we decided to continue by wandering down to the very end of the beach. We saw some people attempting to wade through the sea to make it to another, quieter section of the beach. Not being one’s to shy out of anything competitive we dived straight in. Immediately causing injury to Soph’s foot and almost losing our bags to the sea altogether.

Eventually we managed to make it up on to some muddy cliffside wondering why we had ever started this in the first place. Little did we know we were only just starting. 20 minutes of clambering through muddy paths and over slippery rocks later we arrived at the other beach. But that’s all it was. Another beach. One that looked identical to the one we’d just come from. We immediately turned back.

On our way back we ran into two Spanish girls who were just starting the trek. They seemed to be struggling at the first hurdle with one girl’s foot covered in blood. We advised them probably not to go any further as it gets a lot worse from there on. But did they listen? No. They decided to carry on through the mud with a gapping hole in their foot. And then it started to rain. We never saw them again. Something makes me think that maybe nobody did ever again.

The rain caused us to rethink our further sunbathing session, mainly because there was no sun, to catching the next boat back to Ao Nang. You see, Railay is really nice. You can do some rock climbing or cliff jumping if you like. But in the rain, when you have no money…there isn’t much to do.

Back in Ao Nang we chilled for a while in the hostel before heading out for dinner. A place where you can get a beer, a curry, a naan and rice for £4. Ridiculous. So we hurried down there before they had naan left….again, sorry.

The price was great. But I would say if you’re going to have a curry in Thailand, stick to a green one. Not sure they really know what they’re doing when it comes to the Indian variety. Still, being British, when they asked how the food was we replied with a thumbs up and a slow motion head nod. Superb stuff.

There has been a lot of relaxing on the beach this week so the entries haven’t been as frequent as usual. Who wants to hear about us lounging in the baking sun while knowing it’s set to be the coldest winter ever where they are. At least there’s a good chance of a white Christmas this year. We’ll have one too actually. Just ours will be white sand.

Thanks for following x