Day 10: Krabi / Railey Beach / Ton Sai

Today we flew from Chiang Mai to Krabi with a stop over in Bangkok. It was a bit of an annoying flight as it wasted most of our day.

We were planning on spending the night in Krabi Town but I changed my mind as I heard how beautiful Railey Beach is. We took a long tail boat from Ao Nong and we were planning on staying at Railey East as it is cheaper than Railey West, but someone in the boat recommended Ton Sai so we stayed as it is the backpacker beach so we ended up going there instead.

Railey Beach is attached to Krabi but completely divided by mountains, making it only accessible by boat. It is very quiet and undeveloped. We stayed in a tiny bungalow near the beach for 600 baht.

The second we took step onto Ton Sai I could sense the extremely chill vibe: Bob Marley music playing, BBQ's being setup and dozens of unshaven, loosely dressed backpackers attempting to walk on a wire strung between two trees. This was exactly what I was looking for.

We spent the first night hanging out and walking around admiring the magnificent scenery.

The only thing seperating Ton Sai and Railey West (which is a gateway onto Railey East) is a 20 minute trek over sharp jagged rocks. We walked to Railey West the first night and thought the walk was a bit difficult. When we decided to return to Ton Sai at about 9 PM, high tide had come in and it was clear that our difficult walk earlier was now going to be nearly impossible. We didn't realize that all the rocks we had walked on getting there were now under water until a minute into our walk.

We walked through the dark water (we had no flashlight and the island has very poor lighting) and managed to survive - even though my friend resisted my insistance that we follow the buddy system where we must always hear and see each other.

I recieved many cuts and bruises from the hike but thankfully we are still alive to see Day 11.