Big Trip Day 76: Yes, You Can Have It All!
Hi everyone, it's Justin! I’m back and tanner than ever.
After enjoying Chiang Mai for a few days post meditation retreat, we took a flight south to Krabi. In southern Thailand, there are countless spectacular beaches and tourists can’t get enough of them. From the Krabi area, there are tons of places to go or tours to join, most of which involve going to an island. The word for island is “Koh”. You can sign up to attend a giant pool party on Koh Phi Phi, you can rage at the full moon party on Koh Pha Ngan, and you can even take a boat to visit 4 islands in one day! Once you decide where you’d like to go, the boat terminal workers will slap a sticker on you with the name of the place you are headed so that you don’t get lost, put you on a boat, and send you on your way. Our sticker said Lanta and that’s where we ended up, so I’d say their herding operation is working flawlessly.
We decided on Koh Lanta because it was known as an excellent jumping off point to reach Thailand’s top scuba diving spots. Since we already had our open water scuba certification, we decided to get the advanced credentials needed for more specialized diving that we might want to do in our future travels. We went to a shop called Andaman Adventures, and the certification took 3 days to complete. Each day, we would show up at 6am, get on the dive boat, and head out to a designated reef 1-2 hours away, which was guaranteed to be teaming with sea life.
Our instructor was a Dutchman named Bart, who is an expert on everything under the sea, and happens to also be an accomplished saxophonist on land. Bart was an excellent teacher, so much so that the other dive guests who were assigned to other instructors were getting jealous of all the extra information we were gleaning. Bart taught us that rule number one is to be safe, and rule number 2 was to look cool. He had us practice descending from the surface in a “skydiving” posture because it was undeniably the coolest way to do it. The visibility during our dives was excellent, and we saw some incredible fish, coral, and even a leopard shark.
To obtain our certification, we completed a deep dive (30 meters) and a ship wreck dive, and sharpened our skills in fish identification and underwater navigation. The latter was the most challenging for me given that I regularly get lost in my own neighborhood. Having to navigate my position while monitoring my buoyancy, depth, and oxygen level, felt nearly impossible. I was relieved when Dory mentioned that she felt challenged as well. In the end, despite our questionable navigation abilities, we became “advanced” divers, so we are looking forward to testing our skills on future deep dives, night dives, and shipwreck dives.
After exploring a little bit of the island on our last day in Koh Lanta, we acquired more tourist destination stickers at the Lanta boat terminal and headed to Railay Beach. Most people who visit Railay are drawn in by the pristine beaches surrounded by impressive limestone towers rising up out of the sea. The other great thing about limestone rock formations is that they are ideal for rock climbing. For decades, rock climbing routes have been bolted around Railay and a couple neighboring beaches, making it arguably the best place in the world to rock climb at the beach. I am the type of person who, when presented with two good options, will usually opt for both, if possible (think cookies AND ice cream; or for our SLC crew - Utah Dream Day - skiing, mountain biking AND rock climbing in one day). So for me, being able to climb world class routes AND swim around at a postcard-worthy beach all in the same day was a dream come true.
The most memorable “rock climbing route” we climbed was rated 5.4, which is about as easy as it gets. What made it a 4 star route was the fact that it led to a magical portal. This particular passageway through space and time happened to be a cave, which could be traversed through 15 minutes of sheer darkness, and exited onto a pristine white sand beach. It was hands down the coolest way we have ever finished up a day of rock climbing. Bart would be proud.
The other highlight was getting a taste of deep water soloing (DWS), which is rock climbing without a rope over the water. When you finish a climbing route (or fall), you drop into the ocean, hopefully with a soft landing. I tried for 5 days to join a DWS guided tour, but the tour operator never met the minimum number of guests to justify taking a boat out. I didn’t want to leave without at least giving it a try, so we rented a kayak for a couple hours and paddled around to find the best DWS spot within the general area. I spotted an excellent traverse not far from the beach and hopped into the water to swim up to the start. Dory maneuvered the boat around to snap some action shots while I completed what I’m going to assume was the first ascent, and then we called it a day.
Railay was absolutely overrun by tourists, but we embraced it wholeheartedly. After all, WE are tourists. At all times, we were within a stone's throw of a refreshingly cold fruit shake, a $7 hour-long massage, and the best Thai food you’ve ever had; and yes, Thai food is better in Thailand.
Now if you think we’ve just been galavanting around doing whatever the hell we want, you’d be correct. For the last 6 weeks, we’ve been “out of office”, so we’ve been trying to pack in as much fun as possible. However, Railay concluded that chapter and from there we headed to Kuala Lumpur, where we found a solid wifi connection and got back to work! Moving forward, we’re planning our travels around work, and we’re looking forward to slowing things down a bit.
More soon!
Cheers,
Justin & Dory