Railay

After a few days on Phi Phi, we decided to go back to the mainland. Krabi is the main city on the coast from Phi Phi, but there are many beach options nearby. We chose to go to Railay Beach because it had a relatively inexpensive resort available - that's one of the bonuses of traveling in the "off season".

To get to Railay, we had to take a boat as there are no proper roads to get to this beach. In some ways, this is awesome because it means there are fewer people. In other ways, it was a little tricky since there were thunderstorms every afternoon. We got a little wet both going to and coming from Railay. Don't worry, we didn't suffer too much.

The Railay Beach Resort was incredible. On either side were cliffs rising out of the water and the beach itself was beautiful. We spent time in the water almost every day, and even the rain didn't keep us from exploring the next beach down the way (more on that in a bit). It was one of the more swanky options in the area, but we wanted to splurge a little bit since Erica was with us. By the way, this is our view from the breakfast table.

One afternoon, we decided to swim to the next beach down from where we were staying, Hat Ton Sai. It didn't look to far, and we knew that it was a popular place for rock climbing. We figured that we could watch some of the sporty folks, and get in a fun swim at the same time. Did I say "fun swim"?? In reality, it was easily half a mile to the next beach and we had to swim against the tide to get there. By the time we arrived, we were beat. And we had only done half of the trip. The return swim was a bit more than any of us were ready for, but the Carlson gals toughed it out and we made it back safely.

Here's the real adventure of the swim - on the return, it started to pour so hard that Noah would have been concerned. We weren't too worried about getting wet (heh), but the rain was pelting us and it kind of hurt. We joked about "Forrest Gump Rain" since it was coming down so hard that it was raining up just like he talks about in the movie. In fact, there were a few instances of Forrest Gump Rain while we were there. Next time, we're going to bring an umbrella.