Second day in Railay

Yesterday ended up being quite the adventurous and exhausting day for us! We started our day with some egg on avocado toast and a smoothie for breakfast. Once we had finished up eating, we headed out to check out the beach on the other side of the island. The monkeys on the island were out in full swing (pun intended) in the morning! They were all traveling the same path, so it was almost like an endless stream of them!

On our way to the other beach, we ended up taking a wrong turn as the island maps are not the most clear. But that wrong turn ended up being a cool silver-lining as we discovered a cool boardwalk loop within the cave of the mountain. It was crazy to see the formations that are within the massive mountain that cover the landscape.

After getting back on the right path, we arrived at the other beach. A notable feature of this beach was the 2 shrines dedicated to Pranang, who has symbolic association to the phallus/lingam. It's said if any carved phallus is set out into the sea from Railay, it will always wash up at the Pranang shrines. That takes drift-wood to a whole other level!

After taking a swim at this beach and admiring the rockface we decided to go on a hike close by that featured a viewpoint of the island as well as access to a lagoon. Calling this a hike though is not very accurate, this was more of a mountain climb. Using ropes tied along the way, we climbed up and made it the viewpoint easily enough. In conversations with people returning from the hike, we learned the path to the lagoon was much more involved than the viewpoint path. It featured three 90 degree rockclimbs down to reach the pool at the bottom. This was a very exhausting task, but with the help and encouragement of one another, we made it to the bottom just fine (if "fine" also includes being covered in clay and drenched in sweat).

Setting our eyes on the lagoon made the whole trek worth it! The view of it was beautiful and the scale of the walls were amazing. It took us no time to plunge into the lagoon to cool off from the all the work we put in! The pictures truly do not do it justice!

Once we hopped out and dried off as much as we could, we made our way back up what we had just descended down. Thankfully, the way up was easier than the way down and we just took our time and made it back to the start of the trail. To say we were exhausted after all that would be an understatement! It felt phenomenal to grab a drink and hop in the shower after all was said and done!

The excitement was not done yet though! While grabbing our drink, a torrential downpour passed by! Thankfully we were in a covered area, but it was crazy to watch the storm roll though!

We finished off the day with some delicious Pad Thai for dinner and a few games of Bananagrams in the evening. It took us no time to fall asleep after hitting the pillow as another day of our trip came to a close!En savoir plus