Last of Railay

 Nu entertaining us with Hanna's krama

 Nu (with a shirt, how odd!) doing what he does best: entertaining the crowds. Oh my Buddha!

 Helps to know the party throwers as well as the fighter and the judge... you get vip seats for the game ;)

 Phuket with the red gloves, Krabi (that's Yaya, our trainer) in blue.

 Yaya won. Of course.

 Santi (alias DJ Johnny) doing what he does best... also with a shirt on for once.

 The rest of the Yaya guys, also wearing shirts, working as bartenders...

 This is the reception where we left our bags (and that we used as our changing room and.. everything) during the days and nights when we had nowhere to stay..

 Where we slept the last night... picture two more people in that bed and you can probably understand that neither Matt (the kind owner of the bed who did not know what he agreed to when offering us a place to sleep) nor Hanna got a lot of sleep... since they could barely fit on the bed.

 Leaving Yaya

 Leaving Railay

Waiting for our minivan to take us from Ao Nang to Hat Yai.

Can you tell we need sleep and a shower? And clothes we haven't slept in. 

And the fact that Hanna is eating her noodle soup from a bag and Ruut her salad, does not make us look too representable.

We never really felt like we did fit in with the other beach tourists(we did fit in with the Yaya rasta guys very well, too well, though), but when entering the minivan, with all the other passengers being veil clad Muslim women, we didn't quite fit in with them either in our shabby state...

Leaving Krabi - Day 93

Our mooching levels have reached a new high:
Because of bad weather and poor planning we ended up staying one more night in Rai Leh, this time sharing a bed with a super helpful and kind Aussie who took pity on us and decided to lend us a helping hand. We're ever so grateful and happy we avoided sleeping in a tent during the torrential downpour that prevailed all through the night.
People did apparently not want us to leave. Our muay thai instructor looked very sad this morning (despite winning the fight last night) and when asking what was wrong, he replied: "I am sad you leave today. Please stay.". Another guy at the bar made up an elaborate story about the bus and train stations being flooded demonstrating vividly with a map explaining the meteorogical phenomenon which laid behind, so we would have to stay in Krabi a few more days....
Though our stay has been fun and exciting, we really want to get a move on and see new places before the inevitable and dreaded return to Finland... Also we are a bit tired of taking showers in public bathrooms and explaining to people that we do not know where we are heading next.
Time to ditch Thailand in favor of neighboring Malaysia. Scuba diving will be our top priority there.

//R

Our day in pictures - Day 92

                                          Leaving our expensive bungalow where we spent one night.

                                                     We (finally) took a Muay Thai lesson.

 

We were soaked with sweat almost immediately but actually most of the shine is due to the burning oil we rubbed all over us before starting. It was supposed to make us 'less lazy'. It worked. We came there with practically no energy and even before we began we were all pumped up and eager to learn.

 The lesson was only supposed to be an hour long but we ended up spending more then three hours learning how to hit, kick and protect. It was so much fun and we only regret not doing it sooner. Would love to do it again!

 But the fact that it took longer than expected made Hanna and I late for our next appointment...

                                                                   ...rock climbing with Santi!
                                        The reason we came to Krabi ('the mecca of rock-climbing').

 It was pretty fun, but we got interrupted within an hour by our first tropical storm. So we had to quit early. Otherwise we would have kept on going for the full four hours. Honestly, it was really up to the storm!

 This is Nu (the hysterical laughter guy). He entertained us at the bar with all kinds of tricks you can do with straws. But mostly we just laughed at his laugh. And he laughes a lot!

 Hanna and I just before the storm hit us hard. You can still see our tent standing in the background. Five minutes later it was just a big pile on the ground...

                  The tide is crazy here! We can't grasp how this much water can just disappear and return. (Of course it doesn't 'just disappear' but that's what it feels like...)  

Getting to the beach - Day 89-91

When we decided to go to Krabi we thought we'd take the train there. But it wasn't as easy as we thought. The trip started with 9h on the train and then we ended up taking first one bus, then another bus, then a taxi and then a longtail boat. All this to get to the beach...

But it was very strange being on a train again. We haven't been on one since China and we've missed this way of traveling. The buses stop all the time and since we've mostly traveled on sand roads the air's been filled with dust. Not to mention that the locals are doing a very bad job with handling their motion sickness, resulting in unnecessery discomfort for both them and us.
On this train the windows were open, warm air blowing in, and we saw palm trees outside. Everyone wasn't constantly staring at us and the train was pretty empty so we all got benches of our own. We didn't experience anything like this in China. Especially not when we traveled in third class.
If it wouldn't have been for a group of (very) noisy farangs, the train ride could have been classed as pleasent. But as it were we didn't get much sleep.

We arrived on Rai Leh beach tired, hungry and longing for a shower. Only to realize that all the (cheap) accommodations were full. Feeling very low we sat down to eat lunch at a reggae bar that just happened to be nearby. We started talking with the chatty bartenders. And when they heard we had nowhere to sleep they quickly set up the tent on their lawn. And it wasn't just any tent. It was so big that you could stand upright inside it. There was also a porch outside it, protected with a mosquito net. And three people could easily fit in, even with huge rinkkas. Feeling very grateful, we accepted their solution to our problem. They informed us that a band would come and preform live on their stage that night, and wondered if we felt like partying. Well I'm pretty tired so I might give it a miss, I thought. We haven't  had a god night's sleep since Christmas. But then the guy pointed out the stage to us, a couple of meters away from our tent. Great. When the band started up in the evening there was nothing else to do than drag out our ear plugs and hope we were tired enough to sleep with all the noise. We were. Khao San had taught us well.

//S

 Ps. And since we didn't sleep in a usual place we had some problems explaining to others were we lived. After a long discussion with the guy who rented kayaks he wrote as follows; Hotel: YaYa Bar
                                                                                                                   Room nr: Tent