Travel Excerpts: Railay Beach

"I've put off writing about this place because whenever I try it seemed like I wasn't giving myself enough to to digest the scenery, and therefore transpose it aptly, yet imperfectly, into words. Admittedly after out hellish day trip from Surathani to Krabi town, I wasn't too excited to walk through Tonsai Bay (adjacent to Railay, our home base for the week) during low tide, where the mud antagonizes your every step. With flimsy flipflops on and with an ever-expanding backpack (what I had managed to accumulate was disgusting) the walk was drudgery.

However, all I really needed was a good night's sleep, seeing as I still on the recovery road after getting maybe 4 hours of sleep total the entire time I was in Koh Phangan. The next morning, it was all birds singing and smiles. I woke up encountering the divine.

Railay cannot be reached by land. Towering limestone cliffs obstruct this interesting place, a haven for hippies and rock-climbers (or both) where posters of Bob Marley and Rasta ephemera decorate the place. At points the Rasta aesthetic seem contrived, but its followers seem to have really want to live and breathe such lifestyle, and more power to them. Anyway, its inhabitants aside, Railay glistens in the best of Thailand's geophysical graces, haloed in emerald green waters. The inconvenience of traveling to Railay discourages many tourists (and for that I was so happy) but it is worth it. Even getting to Railay beach is a challenge-- you have to either circumvent an entire cliff but walk through rocks laden with incredibly sharp barnacles, or climb over this cliff in the blistering heat. Haley, Trish and I mistakenly took an erroneous route at first, and before we could slip into the ragged jaws of death we thankfully had a smarter passer-by correct us immediately. After braving some highly complicated steps, we emerged, sweat dripping, our brains probably denatured from the heavy exertion, out of the cliff and made an maniacal beeline for the water. There, the three of us floated and stared at the cliffs (and activity I did for the most of Railay, imagining their origins of both the plausible and implausible sorts) and our painful memories of climbing dissolved into the sea."