South-East Asia

From PP, we went back to the mainland to Railay Beach, which is a Mecca for climbers and boulders. Here we stayed in the best hotel we had for the whole vacation, with an exquisite air con room with cable TV, fridge, balcony and pool for a mere 11 euro a night (View Point Resort, in case you should ever get there). The beach right in front of the resort was not suitable for swimming as it was mainly mangroves and at low tide, during the day, there was just slick and rock.

The two other beaches here on the sunset side of the peninsula were everything we wanted, with extremely beautiful views on the sea, pristine waters and impressive limestone rocks which attract a lot of sport climbers. You can also book free solo climbs here, where you go to a rock in deep water by canoe, climb without a rope and either fall or jump down from up to 20 meters.

There is also a beautiful viewpoint here, which is quite difficult to reach and requires some real climbing over wet, slippery dirtways, and we looked like mud-wrestlers when we were on top, but it was worth the effort.

We also made friends here with a nice Austrian-Russian couple of our age, and Vera fell in love with their one and a half year old son, who was very cute and amazing to us and quite a wonder for the Thais with his blond hair.