Railay Beach, Thailand - Day 1

  Getting to Railay Beach from Bangkok kind of takes forever. We had taken the overnight train from Bangkok to Surat Thai where we had to switch to a bus to take us to Krabi. I slept much better on the train that night. I had put in my earplugs and only woke up a few times. It was great. I woke up around 6 and was ready to go. Raymond was just like you are so wakey! I was just like yeah - I actually slept! So I was all refreshed and ready to go. 
  We had picked up some banana muffins in Bangkok for breakfast, as well as leftovers from our feast the night before, and the muffins were delicious! We should have gotten more of them than we did. So we got to Surat Thani and had to switch to a bus like I said. It was a bit confusing where we should go and what was going on, but we got on the bus and it took us into Surat Thani Town. That bus was really nice so I thought the trip to Krabi would be great. Only we had to wait a bit and switch buses and the new bus, the one that took us the whole way, was not so nice. It was like we were back in Laos. Plus it took forever to get there, partly because of the vegetarian festival and partly because it stopped every two seconds to pick up people/drop people off wherever they wanted to go. 
It took a while just to get out of Surat Thani Town as there were tons of processions and stuff for the vegetarian festival. I didn't mind so much as it was fun watching everything going on. There was this couple sitting behind us and they spoke English and were such complainey pants! The lady just complained about everything and every two seconds was just like oh I wonder what is going on. This might be the vegetarian festival. I wonder if this is the vegetarian festival. This could be the vegetarian festival. Is this the vegetarian festival?? And on and on and finally one time when I turned around to look out the window she said how she wondered if this was the vegetarian festival so I said oh, yes it is and smiled. Well they both looked at me with the nastiest looks like I did something wrong. I was just like alright, you're welcome...I was talking to Raymond about it later and he said he thinks it was just that they then realized that they were not the only English speaking people on the bus and that we could hear them complaining every two seconds. They did stop their whining afterwards so that might have been it. 
Our tickets had said we would get to Krabi at 10:30. Our train was an hour late arriving and with the traffic and everything we didn't get in until 1. When we got closer to Krabi Town the traffic got really bad. There were just so many festivities for the vegetarian festival! So many pick up truck caravans driving on the side of the road carrying people to town. We did see a lot of guys with knives and such in their cheeks. If you are not familiar with the vegetarian festival in Thailand, like I wasn't before someone told me about it, well you might not want to do a google image search for it. The processions include people who have cut their cheeks open and put objects through them and then they wander through town. Guns, knives, swords, anything really. It was definitely something I had never seen before. 
  On the bus to Krabi a guy came by and asked everyone where they were going and to sell tickets to your final destination. We were headed to Railay Beach which is only accessible by boat. We had decided to go ahead and purchase tickets on the bus instead of trying to figure it out ourselves and...really the whole thing was kind of a racket. The bus takes you way out to the middle of nowhere, to this bus stop that seems to only be for this company's buses. Then you are kind of stuck unless you want to get a tuk tuk from them to wherever you are going or walk a ways until you get back to a main road. So we hopped in our tuk tuk, it took us to Ao Nong (above) where we had to wait a bit to catch our boat to Railay Beach. 






  It was really beautiful there and they packed the boat full of people. It wasn't that big, and the engine was super loud and the water very choppy. You had to wade out to the boat and then back to the beach as there were no docks or anything. The water was nice and clear and blue and gorgeous!













  And we finally made it to Railay! Man it really was unbelievably beautiful there. It was my favorite spot we went to in Thailand, because it was so beautiful and relaxing, but it is just a bunch of resorts and tourist stuff. Still amazing. 

  We had landed on Railay West, the more expensive side where you can swim, but we were staying on Railay East which was only a 5 min walk away. We didn't get to our hotel until 3pm so it was a long day of traveling and we were so hungry!

  We got checked in and just decided to go to the restaurant at the hotel for food since it was right there. I stated off with a strawberry smoothie - so tasty! Although the people working at the restaurant did not seem very happy to be there. They were not very nice, but whatever. 

We had ordered some tofu with peanut sauce and a vegetarian pad thai without egg. When the food came out the tofu was more of an appetizer so we asked for another pad thai since we were pretty hungry. Our waitress didn't speak a lot of English, which is fine, so we weren't sure if she understood us or not so we just waited for a bit. I let Raymond eat the first pad thai since I had my smoothie. The other one wasn't coming so we figured she hadn't understood and there weren't very many people around so we got someone else's attention and explained what was going on. I said repeatedly that we wanted another vegetarian pad thai with no egg - I stressed the no egg part just to make sure. Well the new pad thai came out...and it had egg. So I said nicely and apologetically that it had egg and we had ordered it without egg and the lady was just like so? What do you want me to do about it? She was so rude! I'm okay with not amazing service, but I need food I can actually eat. Eventually we got her to take it back and get us a new one without egg, but man. I was not happy. I was fine up until the lady was just so not nice about the egg thing. Not cool. Plus the food was just okay so we decided we would not eat there again. That solves that problem. 


  The view from the restaurant - as we sat there we could see the tide going out. 
  After lunch it was on to swimming in the one pool! 








  When we had checked in the front desk said to not leave your balcony doors open as there are monkeys that will get in and take your things. I was just like okay, but I didn't actually expect to see any while we were there. We were swimming and suddenly there were monkeys climbing on the buildings by the pool!
 
  This lady didn't notice he was right there until he almost got in her room. Crazy

  When it got closer to dinnertime we went to explore and see what else we could find. We took a different path over to Railay West and ended up at another resort restaurant which was sooo much better! The food was amazing, the people were super nice, it was just a great place to eat. They even had pad see eew - my favorite!
  After dinner we wandered along the beach for a bit. 

  The lights are boats docked offshore

It was a beautiful night and perfect for wandering. Very relaxing after a long day of traveling.