Railay Beach

11/5/2006-11/9/2006

We made it to Railay Beach around 10 am or so. We checked into our two fabulous houses that we rented for the 5 days. Railay is a beautiful beach as you will be able to see in the following pictures.

While it would have been nice to lounge around in the sun all day, I actually had to get some work done. Early in the trip Scott told us that we would have a thing called a "Secret Buddha," which works just like a Secret Santa. We drew names earlier in the trip, and we were supposed to make a creative gift for the person rather than just buying something. I hadn't really done much work on it at the time because I was going to use oil pastels to make a drawing and I knew that my big drawing pad was likely to be destroyed on all of our travel days. Thus, I waited to the end of the trip to get it done. I spent most of the first 2 days on it, so I can't really speak of much else that I did during that time. I did play ultimate frisbee on both days with some others in the group, and on the second day we had a big potluck dinner that was really tasty and fun. Here's a picture after we had eaten.

On the third day of the beach trip, we split up into 2 groups to go rock climbing. While I've done some rock climbing indoors back home, this was climbing with real rocks. I got to do 3 climbs, which were a lot of fun but not terribly difficulty for me. Nevertheless, it was cool to have to figure out my own hand and foot holds rather than just following the colors in an indoor rock climbing gym. Here are a couple action shots of my backside while I was on the rock.

After the rock climbing, we went to a cave and climbed up to a point from which we rappelled about 15 meters. There were some spectacular views, and the rappelling was really fun although a bit awkward at first.

On the 4th day we went scuba diving. Because only 3 of us had actually been certified (not me), we basically did a resort course that consisted of some basic training and 2 dives under close supervision of a dive instructor. It was awesome to breathe underwater, and I felt pretty comfortable during both dives. Somebody on the boat made a DVD of the whole day's adventure. We watched it at the end of the day, and apparently there are some incredibly beautiful fish down there. I didn't see quite as much as I would have like to because I was focusing on my technique and looking at my instructor a lot of the time, but in reality I did see a ton of beautiful stuff under the sea. Here are some above water pictures that I took while on the boat.

Although I've seen water like that many times in movies and magazines, today was the first time that I've actually seen it for real. Quite beautiful. This next picture is of a place called chicken head island. We didn't actually go there, however.

As you can see in that picture, it started to get a bit cloudy. There was a pretty big storm, but came after we were done diving thus not interfering with the day's activities. Here is a picture of the storm (from the inside part of the boat, of course).

The 5th day of the beach trip was the last full day that our entire group would be together. About half the group was heading back to Bangkok the next day before flying back to the US in a couple days, and the other half was extending their stays in various places throughout Asia. In the morning we all got together to take some final group pictures at the beach. Here are the pictures of all the girls in the group and then all the guys in the group.

Since I had finished my Secret Buddha project last night and also my gift for the group leader Scott in the morning, I was able to enjoy myself the rest of the day. Richard, Carolyn, and I went on a little hike to a lagoon in Railay. We thought it would just be some walking with maybe some steep parts, but it turned out that we actually had to climb up and down some really steep rocks sometimes with the aid of ropes and rope ladders to get there. It was probably a bit dangerous, but we made it there and back intact. It was a really awesome adventure, and the lagoon itself was cool as well. Here is a picture of the lagoon.

I got to play some more ultimate frisbee in the afternoon, and then it was time for dinner, which would be our last dinner together. Scott ordered all the food from a restaurant. While I helped pick up the food, I caught these great sunset shots with my camera.

The feast of Thai food was awesome, and after dinner we presented our Secret Buddhas. Everyone did a great job, and many of the gifts were really creative and impressive. After the Secret Buddha stuff, Scott split us into 4 groups and gave us a quiz over stuff we may or may not have picked up on the trip. My team won. Yes. We didn't get anything, however. Just satisfaction. After the quiz we just sat around for a while reminiscing about the trip. We all knew it would be difficult to split up the following morning.