Continued Krabi Adventures
Every day is an adventure in this place. And every day I add new cuts, blisters and bandaids to remember it by. Yesterday we did an afternoon climbing session with our excellent and ultra-mellow guide Yhu (skilled enough to belay, smoke a cigarette, and talk on his cell phone at the same time). This time to reach our destination we scrambled around rocks at low tide and picked our way through a dense little jungle, complete with monkeys and vines. Although the view was more obscured this time, the actual climbs were challenging and satisfying. The sun began to drop as Kristin began our last route, bats shooting by, jungle sounds rising. Meanwhile I danced and paced around at the bottom to dodge the dinnertime mosquitoes. By the time we traded shoes, it was really quite dim. My climb was a little surreal—squinting to see traces of glowing white chalk, feet tapping the rock until they stuck. It was a bit like snowboarding in a whiteout—all trust, touch, and kinesthesia. : ) I could see the lights from our beach at the top and then was lowered into a pitch-black pit toward Kristin and my unseen belayer (except for his cigarette flame of course–hee). By the time the gear was packed, it was too dark to see our trail. Our clever guide pulls out his cell phone as a torch and we proceed to slide and trip our way back to the beach. Eventually Kristin and I pull out our digital cameras for a little extra blue glow. Yhu darts ahead, occasionally calling out a “come, come” or a “no, no don’t come” as he searches for our path out. As we near the end we can hear shouts from the beach of “Boat! Boat! Help!” and realize that high tide has come, our previous path buried. The stranded climber ahead of us on the beach was a bit shocked to see us emerge, each wielding a piece of glowing electronic equipment in front of us. As our luck likes to have it, by the time we reached him, a boat was approaching. His buddy had scrambled, swam, and sacrificed his feet to make it back to our beach and was now there via longboat to rescue us nocturnal climbers.
Today we headed out for our first kayak trip, well-equipped with snorkeling gear and climbing shoes. (Our dinner mates last night had told us about “deep sea soloing”–climbing up as high as your nerves can handle and then pushing off into the waves.) Well, in the end we snorkeled 10 minutes and only used the climbing shoes for trips into town. In search of money, we traveled beach to beach. Money exchange places stated, “Um, no….not today” and ATM’s all boasted “Out of Order” signs. Our last hope–Railey Beach East—brought us onto mud flats with tractors–yup, tractors–tugging carts of people out to the long-boats. As I sat guarding our kayak, Kristin struts up into town, sporting bikini and climbing shoes. While I wait, a group of four “Ladyboys” comes off the beach. “Sawatdee Kaa” I call out, curious to hear if they’ll reply with what I’ve been told is a gender-specific ending for transvestites. No such friendliness, they smirk and continue walking through shin-deep water, in the mud, out to their long boat…..in 3-inch spike heels.
Unfortunately we actually have to leave here tomorrow morning. When we came to buy a plane ticket last night we were told by the crabby tour man, “No, closed tonight; no can tomorrow.” I was actually giddy that we then were trading a night in Bangkok for one more night on our little beach. Next stop: far, far from the ocean in Chiang Mai.
Tags: kayaking, Krabi, rockclimbing, Thailand, Thailand, Tonsai
bimpy_ak
Haaaa. What an adventure Cindy. I’d envy you if I were the envious type. The stories are great!