I awoke with high hopes for the day of rock climbing laid out before us, and knew—the moment we rounded the last karst's corner into Railay Bay—that I would not be disappointed. We made our way down an aquarium gravel beach populated by cowardly crabs and dogs barking for the best breakfast scraps their still-sleeping owners would rightfully reward them. Then, after negotiating with a fisherman to cross a narrow canal, we caught a longtail boat to scream us past fantastical cliffs and hills plucked straight out of Super Mario to Tonsai, and, arriving late, got our gear and longtailed it to Railay, where the climbing had already begun.
Twenty Thai-led travellers tackled cliffs like melted candles; the smoky, residual rock sculpted into a beginner climber's paradise. While scared at first, (especially coming down) Hyangmi grew braver with each progressively more difficult route, until, somewhere between her third and forth ascent, she began enjoying it. After scaling a simple boulder, we advanced to the cliff, climbing ever-harder and higher routes until peaking on a narrow ridge of rock some sixty feet above the sand overlooking a translucent blue bay. More than once, I thought I was going to bail, lose my grip completely, and end up swinging like a pendulum from my groin; but I didn't, and neither did Mia.
It started to pour during our lunch break, a tropical torrent of violent proportions that had the patio cleared, umbrellas crippled, and all the footprints in the sand erased in seconds. We were forced to abort our afternoon climb, and retreat back to our beach beyond the cliffs. However, before we got there, three things happened: we visited Krabi Town, it stopped raining, and the fisherman raised his fee.
By the time we got back to the canal, it was dark, and the early bustle of activity at the nearby launch had fizzled down to a handful of off-duty boatmen, drinking in a hazy hut. I asked if anybody could take us to the other side of the canal—a distance of sixty feet, an accordian bus-length away—as a fisherman had done earlier for a fee of 50 baht; a price, we felt, was double what it was worth. After a few grunts and grumbles, one boatman spoke up:“I'll do it for 200 baht.” Ridiculous. No way were we paying that much to be ferried across this thing, but the boatman wouldn't budge; 200 baht for the fifteen second trip, or fuck off.
We chose to fuck off, and were dismayed to discover that, due to some weird twist in the landscape, it would take hours to trek to our villa along the jungle roads, despite it being a five minute stroll along the beach from the other side of the canal. I really wanted to just swim it. I'm not even a strong swimmer, but I knew I could make it easily. As far as sheer richness of experience, it was really the best option. But I had my camera on me, some things we'd bought, and Mia doesn't like the water, so we had to come up with another plan. Forty-five minutes, one failed phone mission, and a great deal of cursing later, the villa sent a jeep to pick us up, for free.
Suck it, boatman.
