Railay Beach

I got some pictures off of Hadley's camera so here's one of us on the way to Railay beach on New Years Eve.

The longboat dropped us off at Railay West but we walked across the island (which provided Hadley with her first encounter with monkeys) and stayed on Railay East in this jungle bungalow...

After her cat nap we headed to the beach for the countdown to 2012.  The beach was packed with lots of people and lots of fire.  Her you can see some fire lanterns being let off into the sky.

Fire spinning, whether it be staff, poi, or other, is a very popular past time in all beach towns and islands that I've visited here in Southeast Asia.  Here are two Thai men spinning fire staff.

And here we have Hadley... making a mad dash through a ring of fire.  I don't know if it was the fact that she was jet-lagged or if it had something to do with the ten piña coladas but as soon as this ring was lit she was through it.

The next day we woke up and decided to explore the east side of the island.  We were given directions to get to a jungle trail by an Australian guy the night before and although we didn't find the trail we had a fun time just walking along the beach.

Hadley kept commenting on how it seemed as though we were walking through a movie, or how we should be searching for the hidden immunity idol.  This is by far one of the most picturesque places I have been so far.

What we didn't take into account however, was the tide.  Here we are at the entrance of a small cave towards the end of our walk and you can see in the background that the water has crept up awfully far on the shore.  We didn't realize it at the time but as we were walking back the path that we came on had been devoured by the ocean and on top of that it started to rain.

But we found kittens, so everything was wonderful.

And after any hike of course... coconuts.

After you drink the coconut you can scrape the inside for an extra treat.  You can see some of it on Hadley's spoon.  Neither of us had ever tried it before but we found it has the consistency of slimy fish but the taste of fresh coconut... which doesn't really convey how delicious and amazing it is but we promise it's fantastic.