No roads lead to Railay

It's been one full day in absolute paradise. Railay beach is a little slice of hippie / climber heaven and it's starting to rub off on Krisi and I. We arrived yesterday afternoon by longtail boat, which is the only way to get to Railay Beach. We're staying at the Diamond Cave resort, which is one of the cheapest places on this relatively expensive island. There are no roads to Railay, and the hotels and restaurants have a captive audience. Yet people flock here by the dozens. Why? Beautiful beaches and limestone cliffs for climbing. We've met a couple of people here already who came for a visit and just never left. Take a look: http://wikitravel.org/en/Rai_Leh

For the first time on this holiday Krisi and I are finally doing nothing. Today we went from beach to beach, finding different places to sit, different coves to explore, different places to enjoy mango shakes and mango salads. We sat and watched the sunset on a straw mat on the beach with a large bottle of Singha between us. Then we headed to watch a movie on one of the outdoor beach bars, which turned out to be a hilariously bootlegged version of "Jumper" with english closed captioning clearly done by someone who doesn't speak english. Further, the whole movie was sped up just slightly so that everyone sounded like chipmunks. It was pretty awesome. Did I mention we'd already had some beer?

I'm starting to find myself drawn to long flowy dresses and I'm starting to think that the right thing to wear every day is exactly what I wore the day before, so it's probably a good thing that we only have one more day in this hippie paradise before we go to Khao Sok park and do some jungle living in treehouses. But what a day it will be....we have planned a climbing lesson for tomorrow morning and then we're going on a sunset snorkelling and beach dinner excursion right after.

Did I mention the island is also home to a whole bunch of affectionate little cats who have begun to follow me around like I am the pied piper of ear scratches? Also, the mini marts sell Tim Tams.

It's all pretty nice.