Beautiful Railay

Between rain storm and rain storm, we took to the stunning karst-dominated landscape of Railai beach, both the East and West sides. It was just as I'd remembered it. 

Preface: this entry has a gratuitous number of stunning beach photos. That's mostly it.  Except for...phallus cave, a place for sailors to make their offerings to the sea gods before departure: 

And beautiful iced coffee:

Next to beautiful papaya salad:

Here's the stunning picture upon stunning picture. Moody, atmospheric weather, wind and all:

Climbing the rocky outcropping in flip flops to pass all the rock climbers and make it to Ton Sai Beach:

Ao Phra Nang Beach and a predominantly sunny day interrupted by a brief, intense rain:

Beautiful rain reflections: 

The wind:

Let's finish on a non-gratuitous beach shot. Yep, we're tan and smiley and a million miles away from the madness of work. 

Monkey Business

There is no scarier creature than a monkey. Perhaps it's the opposable thumbs or their ability to remind humanity of their humble Darwinian beginnings. Whatever the case, our time on Railai Beach, a not-island only reachable by longtail boat, will be forever punctuated by our primate encounter.

Paul and I arrived from Bangkok in the rain, a nearly sideways monsoon style murkiness that threatened to loom for the entire week. We checked into our accommodation, the rather unique Railai Beach Club, two dozen private wooden houses and bungalows nestled between the beach and karst landscapes on Railai West.

Our bungalow, number 19, was a stunning house on stilts—kitchenette outside; big bedroom with bed, table, kettle and tea drinking paraphernalia; three sets of double doors; outdoor bathroom with jungle shower; and a wraparound porch to, theoretically, sun oneself.

Our place also came with a guidebook warning us of mosquitos, monkeys, setting fire to the building. Paul, ever the Londoner, was skeptical: ‘there’s too many sounds…what about the mosquitos…what if someone comes from the hills and murders us in the night?’ But, groggy from the rain, we fell asleep for one of those epic holiday naps, doors wide open, and were just fine.

Which definitely lured us into a false sense of security. The next day, sunshine abounding, we made for the beach, for a snack and then back for a little rest, leaving a bag of randomly other-country flavoured crisps (one of Paul’s true holiday delights) on the table.

The doors were open, curtains down when, mid-rest, a presence descended. Two pairs of beady eyes stared voyeuristically, predatorily at the doorway. The more brazen of the two sauntered in, snatched the bag of crisps off the table and sauntered out the other doors. The second monkey continued to gawk before making the decision to climb up the tea shelf, inspect all the items and make off with the jar of tea bags and sugar packets. Calmly. Slowly.

All guile, he made his way back onto the porch, half a metre away, and sat with his kill, coolly twisting the lid off and systematically unwrapping tea bags and emptying sugar packets straight into his mouth. We stared, transfixed, not quite believing what we were witnessing. 

And then madness descended. The gang ran from out of the jungle at full pelt, full-grown macaque monkeys, teenagers, mothers with babies hanging from their bosoms. They climbed and jumped and shit themselves stupid.

We screamed and screamed and screamed. Stupefied, it took us another minute to run, close and lock all the doors. And they were upon us, climbing up the roof, shaking the locked doors beseeching egress, banging angrily on the windows like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.

Then they infiltrated the bathroom. One monkey took to his rooftop perch and commenced operation minty fresh breath by chewing up, and then discarding, my full tube of American-bought, hoarded-in-China toothpaste.  Another commandeered my Lush face scrub and licked the contents out of the jar.

The monkeys not participating in the orgy of smelly human product consumption sat watching.  We engaged in a creepy staring contest. We lost.

This took it one step too far. Cowering at the prospect of facing the monkeys head on, I sent Paul. Shaking, he took to winding up and snapping a bath towel in the gang’s direction.  The monkeys smirked and did not move but Paul, ever the gentleman, did rescue the remains of my toiletries before dashing to reception to call in reinforcements.

Five minutes later, a man wielding a rather large baton came hooting past the property. The monkeys scattered and then ran back into the forest. Paul soon followed, looking harassed but relieved.

As it turns out, our monkeys were local celebrities.  When Paul complained about our inability to leave the doors and windows open, the receptionist was initially prickly. But on finding out we were in Number 19, she changed her tune: ‘Ohhhhh, number 19, yes the monkeys are particularly known in this part of the beach club.’

This is how we commandeered a bungalow change. 

For the rest of the week, we fell asleep to the croaking of some very vocal bullfrogs and woke up to the Thai receptionists giggling themselves silly.  Compared to the gang activity of a group of grabby-handed monkeys, we settled in quite peacefully.

Bangkok

Thailand is one of those countries and Bangkok is one of those cities that I can never get enough of. Every time I go back, I discover something new--a beach, a temple, a new food at a street vendor. There's a vibrancy and a kindness from the 'land of a thousand smiles' that keeps me coming back. Some of this desire to be somewhere kind was also down to the China effect--the in-your-face nature of day-to-day dealings in Shanghai has a way of wearing you down. And so I embraced Thailand with open arms.

Upon arrival in Bangkok, Rosa and I picked up Paul and made our way to the Sukhumvit region of the city. A nap later, we made our way to some old haunts including a ride through the city's canals on a longtail boat:

From there, we wound our way around one of the city's random food markets. One that pops up on the side of a road and goes on for miles. Standard pad thai was our first meal:

Our next and only Bangkok temple stop was to the world famous Wat Po, home to the 46 meter long golden Reclining Buddha. Beside this claim to fame, it's also known as the birthplace of Thai Massage. A school and discounted (as if they needed to be) massage centre are part of the temple complex, all above board, of course.

Here hundreds of Buddhas sit, stand, recline across the vast complex of temples. It's fabulous: 

 

Our classy borrowed indoor temple clothing, to cover our hussy knees and shoulders: 

Buddha languidly reclines, without emotion: 

For the rest of our little two-day stop, we wandered, people watched and attended some of the finer rooftop drinking establishments. Jay, my friend from high school, and his wife, Beth, met us for dinner and regaled us with the international life in the city. No surprises that they loved it, though I did question their ability to cope in the humidity.

What was particularly interesting was Beth and Jay's view of the coup that took place in May 2014. Thailand is no stranger to a peaceful coup and as such, life continued on fairly normally. For tourists, taxi rates became more regulated; but sadly, so did the ubiquitous street food vendors. In the background, large-scale constitutional reforms were taking place. The long-term effects of these are still to be seen but they seemed to place more power in the hands of the military. The press, particularly Western media, said little about the events taking place and so Beth and Jay's friends reacted either in panicked shock or not at all. No surprise there, really.

After one final Thai massage, a manicure and a spicy Thai curry, our time in the capital came abruptly to an end. Rosa made her way back to Vietnam and Paul and I ventured to Railai beach, via flight to Phuket. 

Onward to find more fantastic wonders of Thailand!

Wildlife Spotting

Besides its tea and amazing breakfasts, Sri Lanka is also known for its wildlife. There are a few elephant 'sanctuaries' but the rumours going around about animal welfare were less than promising and so we decided to steer clear. Instead, we opted for an open-air jeep drive through Minneriya National Park, the home of watering ponds frequented by upwards of 300 elephants. 

At first, things were slow but soon elephants began to amble out of the forest, just a lazy little walk down the dusty roads.

The park is home to a large lake and grassland area that attracts lots of interesting birds as well as the elephants: 

As we got closer to the local watering hole, female elephants and their offspring gathered. Respectfully, the jeep drivers backed off and gave them their space. 

And on the way home, a male elephant with a sense of wanderlust meandered down the side of the road. Somehow he'd made it off the acres and acres of wildlife reserve and people paid their due deference to his huge presence: 

Later in the week, as we made our way to the beaches near Trincomalee, we had the chance to interact with the beasts of the sea. We started with a simple snorkel, though the currents were incredibly strong. The beauty of staying on a beach with limited development meant that we got to know the local community. We made friends with the proprietor of a local hotel whose business had lived through the Sri Lankan Civil War only to be decimated by the 2004 tsunami. Unsurprisingly, water and wildlife conditions were affected too--local coral and reefs were only starting to recover, only to then be affected by tourism. As a result, our proprietor friend was big on ensuring that the local government limited the number of tourist boats that made it to the local island reefs. We were lucky enough to be on one of these snorkel boats and our guide was big on explaining the human effects on the environment:

Visibility was middling but we still managed to see a rather imposing-looking black reef shark. We were assured that he was human-friendly but I still managed to scream through my snorkel.

On the second beach day, Rosa and I gathered up the courage to put our Scuba licenses to good use. Back with our local company, a very nice, rather young looking Sri Lankan man took us out to Swami Rock, right off the coast of Koneswaram Temple, a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva. As legend has it, local people would throw statues of the various Hindu gods into the ocean in front of the temple for good luck/fortune. The ensuing waters in front of the temple are dotted with the remains of Ganesh, Shiva, all in miniature:

Diving down we didn't expect to see much exciting with such limited visibility: 

But there were some good things of note. 1. The invasive lionfish--consider these guys the drunken uncles of the sea. No one invited them, no one wants them there and yet they make their presence known:

2. A slowly meandering sea turtle!

And there were the various homages to Hinduism dotting the shallow sea floor. All in all, a good reunion to diving.

This wasn't the end to our Sri Lankan trip. We still had to endure a knuckle-grippingly fast ride from Trinco back to Negombo, the beach town close to the airport. We knew it would be a tricky ride when our driver (not Shane) swigged a clear liquid straight from a marked bottle of white wine and played the Craig David interview CD on repeat at least four times.

We lived to tell the story and had a surprisingly nice time in Negombo. The beach was just meh but it's not a bad place to waste a day. Between our cheap Ayurvedic spa treatments, $5 spicy crab for dinner and a spot of shopping, it was a peaceful conclusion. By the end of it, we were firm believers in Sri Lanka. It's special. It gets in you. I mean, everything but the white wine and Craig David, of course.