a great day for up

I made it to Thailand! What a completely different place from India. Bangkok was a bit of a culture shock after almost three months of being enveloped and devoured by dirt and filth and sweat and smiles and curiosity and poverty and pride and devotion. I'll have to share more about Bangkok itself later, as I transferred all those photos off my camera and don't have the disc with me at present.

However, I have since made my way down to the south western Andaman coast of Thailand near Phuket to where the earth has thrust up spectacularly unreal deformations of limestone pinnacles and softened them with impossible jungle growth. After landing in Phuket I immediately bumped over to the sea town of Krabi as a jumping off point to the islands. I managed a full day boat tour of four islands with some decent snorkeling, and a couple of nights of great Thai street food eating at a nighttime market, but the real thrill was spending two days at the isolated peninsula of Railay, cut off from all wheeled transport by huge limestone cliffs and only accessed via boat, typically the Thai long boat which has an elongated streamlined shaped wooden hull and both powered and steered by a 20 foot steel pole with a small propeller at one end and balanced in the middle by an attached outboard engine... they move the entire engine balanced on the pole in order to steer. The Railay peninsula is a series of three calm beaches (one more of a mangrove swamp) linked by walkways and developed with many resorts, bungalows, bars, and restaurants, but most known as a world class rock climbing spot, as well as a spectacularly beautiful landscape. I took the opportunity to challenge my fears a little and spent several hours exhausting my fingers and forearms and legs scampering up and sometimes clinging with dear life to the beauty.

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