I have a friend that lives in Phuket and I enjoy going to visit him but lately I have found myself getting a bit annoyed at how many other people there are there. I feel like Phuket has expanded too rapidly and likely already hit the maximum amount of people that the island can accommodate quite some time ago.
It takes a really long time to get anywhere on the island and even though there are many nice places to visit there, tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of other people are in the process of doing the same thing as you are at the same time. So when I had a bit of a break come up recently I decided to go and visit a place in the South of Thailand that people don't talk about nearly as much, Krabi.
The same clear water can be found here that is in other coastal areas of the country, but with a fraction of the amount of people. The above image is from the Raylay lagoon and it is one of the more popular places to go around here. Despite it being popular, it was free to go to this, but it did involve some rope climbing that wasn't really all that difficult but there was some danger involved for sure.
These rocks on the sides are sharp and they are also slippery because the part we are in is a skinny pathway to the water down below, which is lovely to look at but not so nice to swim in since the floor of it is an odd almost mangrove-like mud. I think it is better to just look at it and not get in.
Getting to it is a bit of a trek, but as one of the rock climbing shops advertises around here, it is "nothing impossible." I think that most reasonably fit people and even some not so physically fit people can do this with relative ease.
The rope holds are built into the side of the cliff an this view makes it look a lot more difficult than it actually is. Unless you are incapable of pulling your own body weight up an incline, you will not have a problem doing this. There is one thing to keep in mind though: Nobody is out here to catch you if you fall and the medical services available in this area is pretty sparse! There are a lot of warnings about this at the base where you are charged nothing to get in.
This is creative photography on my part, it is not truly vertical... If it was those leaves wouldn't be gathered on the sides of the rocks the way they are.
This is a better idea of what it is really like. For a lot of it, you don't actually need to use the ropes and there are plenty of them in case there are many people that are trying to climb all at the same time.
When it has just rained it can be a bit more treacherous because all of it is covered in what appears to be always present red clay and that, of course, gets slippery when wet.
This was just one of the many things that I did while I was in RayLay, which was just a wonderful place to be and is so different from the busy hustle and bustle of Phuket. I may have found a new vacation home actually because since I live in a busy city, I don't really relish the idea of taking a vacation to one as well.