The painful journey to Eden

11:16PM I’m writing this post lying on the bed of my crapy bungalow in the middle of paradise aka Railay. I can hear the gnarly, high-pitched voices of two American teenagers from upstate New York complaining about how unsatisfying their trip has been, through the paper thin wall separating our rooms. I have a tiny plastic fan next to my bed, or should I say mattress, to dry my sweaty body. My hellhole does have a private bathroom though! It includes a shower head (cold water only) above the semi-fonctional toilet, but no sink. By semi-fonctional I mean you need to turn the valve on top of the pipe coming out of the wall and fill a bucket with water to then poor it down the basin in order to evacuate your waste matter. This wonderful beach house cost only 600 Baht per night or 21.52$ CAD. I normally wouldn’t even pay 2$ to sleep here. But why on earth did you? You must be asking yourself as your reading this post. Let me tell you.

Sunday prior to my departure, the choice of my next destination had not been settled. I had a few options and one of them was Krabi. I did a bit of research in order to make a final decision. Coincidentally I received an email from my friend Johann who visited Thailand last november. He made a few recommendations and one of them was Railay which is located in the province of Krabi. ‘The prettiest playground around with stunning karst mountains rising out of the sea’ is the description of the area in Lonley planet. Confident with my choice, I immediately booked my flight online.

I left Bangkok at 1:30PM, Tuesday. The flight to Krabi took around 1 h 10 min. Once at the airport, I took a 40 min bus ride to Ao Nang bay. There I had to walk knee deep in water 100 meters into the Andaman Sea to get to the long-tail boat that would bring me to Railay. This place is essentially composed of 4 small enclaves encompassed by giant limestone walls unaccesible from the main land. Three of the idyllic beaches are connected one to another by nicely paved cours, the fourth is only attainable by hiking a narrow pathways along a 50 foot cliff. I did not know that at the time. I got off at the first beach our skipper stopped. I started walking along the beach, with my two backpack totaling close to 45 ponds, in search of a place to sleep. Sorry fully booked, I was told by all the nice employee of each of the places I went to. Exhausted, I decided to open my LP guide book in order to look for a list of hotels I could call instead of desperately running around like a fool. It would have been a great idea if there was any signal available. The sun was coming down and I had no time to loose, I got up and started walking across to the other beaches to continue my search. There all resorts had a room available for me if I was ready to dish out 900$ per nights. There was one other beach left, but I had to take another long-tail boat to reach it unless I was ready to hike the 50 foot cliff.
A skipper was nice enough to bring me there for 200 baht, twice the amount I payed to get to Railay in the first place.
It was there at the cheap backpacker beach where I finally found refuge. I still had to get turn down twice before landing at fabulous Mambo Bungalows.

Despite the painful hotel hunt I have to admit this place is exactly has advertised in Lonely planet. Here’s a few pics to give you an idea. I would have loved to put up more pictures but unfortunately Railay as a less reliable internet connection then the Flintstones have. Tomorrow I’m trading my crapy bungalow for a sweet air conditioned room. It’s already booked, I had my lesson.