Hat Ton Sai

Wednesday October 6th, 2004

At breakfast I met a French girl (didn’t write down her name) and a guy Jessie that she had just met. She invited me to join them for breakfast, which I did. Turned out Jessie was also there solo, and was looking for a climbing partner for the day. So that was easy. He was a teacher from California, on a year-long break. Afterwards he planned to get a masters degree and probably teach again. In the morning we went bouldering at Ton Sai beach.

Cliffs in the morning.

The jungle between Hat Ton Sai and Railay.

Jessie bouldering.

Ryan bouldering.

After bouldering we walked over to Railay Beach, which involved scrambling over some rocks and walking around in the surf some. It’s not a very convenient walk. I also found later that there’s a path up through the jungle, and it’s about equally as inconvenient but the only way to make it at high tide.

Cliffs from Railay beach.

Railay beach itself is a lot nicer than Ton Sai, and the resorts are bigger and nicer. Hat Ton Sai had felt a little empty, and I wanted to be closer to the main climbing, so I moved over to Railay Bay Resort at lunch. Turned out Railay felt a little too busy, and had a lot less opportunities to meet climbers, so I should have stayed at Ton Sai, but I didn’t move back due to the hassle.

When I went back to Ton Sai to get check out and get my stuff, a squall moved in, and no long-tail boats were going back to Railay. So I hung out and ate lunch for awhile, then caught a long-tail over. I rode over with a couple from Belgium, Carl and Inga. They were pretty interested to hear my Belgian last name, saying it was a good name. Carl cheerily suggested I should vote in the upcoming election, but didn’t go so far as to say who I should vote for. Given that probably 99% of the world thinks we (and they) would be better off with Kerry, I didn’t need to ask.

After I moved my stuff over, I went snorkeling off the beach for a few minutes. It wasn’t very clear and there wasn’t much to see. It was also very shallow a long ways out.

After swimming I met up with Jessie again and we walked across the peninsula to Railay East. I bought a rock climbing guide book at the King Climbers shop. A good starter wall is also on that side, it’s called 1-2-3 wall. We went there and did about 5 of the easier climbs. It was fun climbing, with lots of interesting holds due to the erosion of the sandstone. By then it was time for Jessie to head back to Hat Ton Sai for the night. We made plans to meet the next morning for some more climbing.

Jessie on 1-2-3 wall.

Bungalow at Railay Bay Resort.

More of Railay Bay Resort.

Dinner at the Railay Bay Resort’s restaurant exemplified the annoyingly slow service there. You have to be aggressive to get a waiter to do anything, and even then the timetable is stretched way out compared to what I’m used to. At one place I asked my waiter twice for the bill, and about 10 minutes later gave up and walked up to the desk to pay, and I don’t think the waiter had misunderstood.

Showering was interesting at my new bungalow. Through some miracle of engineering they were able to turn a good, continuous faucet into a discreet all-hot or all-cold switch. There was literally no way to get warm water, only full-on cold or full-on hot, and believe me I put a lot of effort into it. I can’t figure out how that’s possible with that type of faucet, but some genius there has managed it, maybe using quantum physics or something.

Most of the places I’d stayed used on-demand water heaters that worked great. The on-demand heaters hang on the wall in the shower and you turn them on and dial whatever temperature you want. They work great, and they’re apparently very efficient.