day 8: rental car and railay beach

this morning we left the lovely phi phi islands to make our way back to krabi to be at the airport there by noon to pick up our rental car and begin our seven day road trip back to bangkok.  it was exciting to start this new leg of our jouney and have a new mode of transportation.  just a few miles down the road from the airport we decided to inaugurate our road trip with our first little detour off the main drag and followed a sign to a cave monestary.  we wound down the road and came to a very busy little monastery with lots of buddhist activities and worship going on.  it may have been a special day because there were lots of locals wandering about bringing incence and flowers to the holy sites and someone going on and on in thai over a microphone.  there were lots of monks and monkeys roaming about both interesting to watch especially the latter which we saw climb up onto a girl to get her food and she didnt even seem to mind.  then another one figured out how to open a brand new water bottle and take a big swig before tipping it over and letting it pour all over the ground.  we wandered back into the jungle there and explored their sacred caves, the first of our trip but there would be many more.  we eventually got back in our new home of the trip, a cute little silver honda jazz, and went on down the road.  luckily michael is used to driving on the other side of the road from living in the caribbean a while back.  i would get confused super quick and get us into trouble so he agreed to do all the driving.  i tried to be a good navigator but it is a bit difficult with thai words that are so similar.  i was a pretty dedicated snack opener at least! :)  we didnt drive very far that first day since we both wanted to check out railay beach, famous for its great rock climbing.  we found a cheap room in ao nang, the nearest bay on the mainland, and caught a long tail over to the peninsula with no roads in the afternoon.  we made our way to the furthest beach and clambored all over the rocks and into some small caves at the far end of it.  the rock formations were amazing and we could actually watch water droplets fall from the dripping rocks a hundred feet above and try to splat them before they hit the ground.  there were tie ins, carabeaners, and chalk marks all over the place showing the favorite paths of many climbers been before.  a good place to come spend some time if you are into that.  michael had heard about a secret lagoon in the valley between three cliff walls here and so we were looking for some kind of trail but all we found was basically a rope up a tree rooted wall along the way to the beach.  i wasnt up for getting incredibly muddy since it had been raining quite a bit but michael stripped down to his swimmers and started up into the jungle in tarzan style barefoot and all.  he returned maybe a half hour later covered in mud but had found the lagoon.  he was glowing because that is his favorite kind of nature trekking, just blazing his own trail.  after michael had cleaned up a bit, we went off to explore one more cave at the other end of the beach.  it was filled with glittering stalagtites and stalagmites and was made for the tourists with a wooden boardwalk included.  we caught the last long tail off railay and jetted back to the hipster resort town of ao nang.  we were famished after not really eating all day and completely gorged ourselves at an all you can eat buffet.  we pretty much had to roll ourselves home but there was a nice boardwalk to walk a bit and help us digest our massive feast.