Life at the blunt end: Sawasdee!

Greetings from Thailand! Having fun over here but it's been very much a holiday of two halves.

Initially we stayed on the Krabi Peninsular on Tonsai beach, a beach lined by cliffs and only accessible via long-tail boat or a mountain trail through mosquito-infested jungle. Even getting there was an adventure - we had to transfer from the ferry onto a long-tail and then jump out of the long-tail into knee deep water

Our accommodation was a 15 minute walk up a dirt path - although having said that, every path on the beach was a dirt track. This is the main street in Tonsai

and this is the cabin - the skeeter defeeter paid for itself on the first night (I did have a mosquito net in the cabin but one of the families I was with had less nets than they had family members so we moved it). The fan was invaluable during the night but not much use during the day as we didn't have electricity between 9am & 5pm (and it was around 34 degrees with high humidity).

So why were we there? The guys I was with were old climbing mates from the UK and they wanted to sample some of the local rock. Alas my knee prevented me from joining in (which is fortunate because otherwise my total lack of fitness would done the same thing in a far more humiliating way). Still, it didn't stop me enjoying the scenery.

So what do you do on a remote peninsular when you can't actually do what you went over there for? Mainly relax, swim, drink beer and hang out at some of the many sea-shack bars on the beach, who seemed to be tailoring their activities specifically for me

Some of the bars were well positioned to watch the climbing, although I was disappointed that my mates didn't give this wall a go whilst I shouted encouragement around a big Chang

They redeemed themselves during a deep water soloing trip. It looked hard enough climbing up there, for me jumping off would literally have been one step too far