Rain Prevents Further Exploration

Coming in to land at Railay Beach by long boat. Our first view of the area where we woudld be spending three nights - only reachable by longboat.

The monkeys we saw yesterday afternoon on the beach scavenging for food.

Saturday 21 October

The sun takes some time to come out here each day, often not making an appearance until after 09.00 as was the case today. But when it did shine, it was extremely hot – probably the hottest day we have had on this part of the tour. Much too hot to do anything really – even sitting in the shade was melting and you could feel your skin burning. We needed to sort a few extra baths to last us tonight, but forgot all the essential information was stored in the hotel safe. So after a short spell on the blog and emails, we decided on a walk around the bays to see what Railay Beach had to offer and collect the safety deposit items later.

We wandered across from the East Beach to West Beach – a much sandier and altogether more appealing beach – through the building sites - and found Linda, Jill and Warren in one of the beachside cafes. We ordered a crab salad and a crab sarnie for lunch, along with some coconut shakes – the best we have drunk since Thong Krut on Koh Samui - really like a Bounty bar on ice – mmmmm.

Then we sat under a tree and people-watched for an hour or so – although there was not lots going on – had everyone gone home because its Saturday, or were they all out on tours? We decided then to return to the hotel and we had only just reached East Beach again, when darker clouds began to gather overhead – a bit early today at just after 14.00. So we collected our gear from the safe and retreated to our chalet – and within ten minutes or so the thunder and lightning began, and the rain fell down in torrents – for a couple of hours. It’s amazing that it can be so hot in the morning and so wet in the afternoon.

The money situation wasn’t that successful. Before we came away, we had arranged to each have an American Express Travellers Cheque Card to save carrying so many travelers cheques. We understood that these cards could be reloaded on our way round the world and arranged for both to be attached to my bank account, and left all Colin’s cards at home. What a surprise then, when American Express refused to reload Colin’s card because the account we were using was in my name. After a serious altercation we ended loading double on my card and it appears Colin’s card is now redundant! But at least we can eat tonight and get some ringats tomorrow in Malaysia.

While the rain fell we passed the time playing cards, sending another couple of emails and (guess what!) packing our cases again, until it was time for cocktails!! We have had a note from Nok to say that we should wear shorts and sandals tomorrow as we may well have to carry our cases through the shallow waters of the bay to the boat, if the tide is low! Not looking forward to that at all - I can’t hardly lift my case for a minute – never mind traversing a rocky beach through the waves and hauling it four feet into the air over the side of the boat. Especially at 06.00 in the morning! We shall see.

We strolled down to the hotel restaurant soon after 19.00 and had a couple of cocktails (I could recommend a Thailand Fanatasy – a pink concoction with rum, triple sec and grenadine) before eating what may be the last Thai meal of our trip. As usual for this hotel’s restaurant, they got the order wrong – my deep fried squid never arrived and my spicy cashew salad came as a starter instead of with my green Thai chicken curry as part of the main course. But the food was good – Colin had more vegetable spring rolls (I think he will be getting withdrawal symptoms for these later in the trip). There were many more people in the restaurant tonight, so we guess that today was a major change-over day – and there are lots of children here now - from babies to teenagers – but we remembered it is probably half term at home. I presume this means that Penang will be busy too.

As we have to be up about 04.45 tomorrow to make the necessary connections, we decided an early night was in order, and finished our packing and went to bed, even as the English Premier footy match was about to be screened here live – Chelsea vs Portsmouth.