In the south west of Thailand is one of the worlds best places for rock climbing and as I've been going on about it since Laos I wanted to head there before we left. The guys were that interested so myself & Valerie headed to Koh Phangan for a couple of days and then south to Rai Leh.
My first experience of Koh Phangan just featured Haad Rin where the famous full moon party is held. Last year myself and a couple of mates decided to go there just for the night and experience the party. We left everything in Koh Tao, got to Koh Phangan and told the taxi driver to bring us to the party. He kindly informed us it had been the day before! Whoops. We ended up having a great night anyway but at no fault to the beach town, it is designed for booze, parties and drugs which kind of take away from the amazing beach. I know some of you are reading that statement saying, what are you crazy??? It has everything I want. It just doesn't, the crowd or something is meh...
So after that experience I wanted to give the islands another chance. We stayed well away from Haad Rin and stayed on the west coast of the island. The area itself was beautiful but pretty dead, we cruised around a bit and saw some of the other beaches, the viewpoint and the homemade ice cream shop! Yum! We also gave the half moon party a try, it follows the same idea as the full moon except it is in the middle of the jungle. We worked a deal with the owner of our place to get dropped there and back so at about 11pm slightly intoxicated we jumped on the back of his moped for the 20 minute drive to the venue.
The party itself was still only kicking off when we got there, the venue is amazing. Big stage in the middle of the forest, dance floor surrounding by trees, food stalls every where, glow in the dark body paint everywhere and cracking music. Unfortunately the vodka caught up with my companion so we lasted all of an hour and a half at the party before it was time to head back home!
Koh Phangan Parties 2, Peter 0
The next day I returned the motoped which we had had for two days and got scammed by the owner. He insisted I didn't pay for the first day of the bike & wouldn't give me back my passport. After 15 minutes I had to pay him again as the bus to the ferry was waiting. It is the closest I've ever come to going through with one of those mad ideas that comes into your head, mine was hit the guy & take my passport back.
We made it to Krabi later that night, rested up for the night and then got the boat to Rai Leh in the morning. Rai Leh is a peninsula surrounded by ocean and mountains, that can only be accessed by boat. The peninsula is a giant sand bar that connects two huge huge formations. Jungle has overgrown the entire sandbar with the fancy side on the west and the backpacker side on the east. Ton Sai is another cove just around the bay which is world famous for rock climbing. There are no bikes, cars or even atms here. The whole peninsula only got electricity within the last year or so.
Ironically this might have been one of the most beautiful places I visited while traveling but I didn't take more than one or two photos! I went and walked the climbing routes the first day and met a great guy called Karn* who was looking for a climbing partner for the next few days. Valerie had also wanted to learn how to climb so I signed up to a beginner course with her as well, which in the end meant over 5 days when I hadn't climbed in a few years I climbed 7 routes/6 routes/6 routes/3 routes/4 routes. It might not sound like a lot but trust me it is, my body was falling apart by the end, but I loved it! The skills came back fast enough, by the second day I was climbing in Ton Sai and on the last day I climbed a 7B route. I know that no one understands that, but it was hard and I loved it so there! ;)
On the last day Valerie joined myself & Karn to go climbing on the east side of the peninsula, we got in some great routes (including my 7B, whoop whoop) then decided to take the cave route back to the west side. This was amazing, we climbed up into stack and came out of the cave entrance halfway up the stack on the west side with this view.
As we only had two harnesses we had to use some inventive switching to abseil back down the stack to the path but it all worked out as an amazing experience. Another highlight of Rai Leh is the Blue Lagoon. In the middle of one of the stacks is a giant sea water lagoon totally enclosed on all sides by sheer cliff faces about 200 meters high. It is exactly like something from a paradise movie, because of the difficultly in getting to the lagoon ( you have to climb up one side and back down the other) very few people go there and you can usually have it completely to yourself which we did. Valerie has some amazing pictures which I'll try to post up along with all the other things I keep saying I'll post up eventually ;)
*Karn turned out to be a celebrity in Thailand. He moved to America when he was 16 and wrote a book about the differences in the cultures.
i understand 7b. That's rock hard. hadn't realised you were any use at climbing.
ReplyDeleteand was Karn a celebrity purely from this book he wrote or what?
I'm pretty good at climbing alright, but I rarely get time to climb.
ReplyDeleteHe was a celebrity from the book, he marketed it really well was on lots of press, tv mags radio over there. He said he would be regarded as a "B list" celeb at best. He said his book is considered controversial over there, for the way he talks about Thai life.