Railay and Jackulvin

We left Phi-Phi completely relaxed and with two new wicked mates on board.
Jack and Kulvin were briefly touched upon by Kelsey in the last blog (steady now...) but i just wanted to give them as much mention as they deserved.
It's strange to come to the other side of the world and meet people who you think you would genuinely go out of your way for straight away. Normally you do the whole, "oh hey where are you from? What do you do? Blah blah" But by the end of our 8 days together these boys could have a kidney of mine each.

They were chilled as hell, (which isn't too hard in paradise) but hugely switched on. Their friendship for each other was infectious. And massively down to them, our transition from Bangkok stress to Phi-Phi horizontal happened almost instantaneously.

They had already been to Railay but because we were getting on so well, they decided to come back with us for a day (at first).

We will definitely make the effort to see these guys back in England. So boys, if you're listening, unfortunately you've made mates to stay.
THAT'S BETTER! Brighton New Year. Done.



We'd never heard of Railay before, and without them we wouldn't have gone. Railay (http://www.railay.com/railay/intro/intro.shtml) is part of mainland Thailand, but because of it's location, is only accessible by boat. We got a ferry from Phi-Phi and it dropped us off in the middle of the sea, to jump in a little rickety long-tail boat (a water tuk-tuk) which carried us the rest of the way to the East Railay beach.

Now to be honest, when we first pulled in i thought, 'we left Phi-Phi for this?!'. Muddy sand, building work and to be honest not much to look at.
But our belief In our fellow man (Jackulvin) made us stick it out.

And man, are we glad we did.

We booked into a fantastic resort, a/c, TV, a swimming pool, for about a tenner a night, and already we felt right at home.

The boys showed us their favourite places on the island. Skunk bar, Lucky restaurant... you'll hear about more as we speak to you. But it was amazing.

We walked through the island, to the West beach and honestly, hands down, the most beautiful beach i think i will ever see.
Golden sand, water more blue than the eyes from that guy in Eastenders (Martin Kemp i think), and rocky craggy outbreaks all over the horizon. Jealous yet? It was amazing.

We swam, snorkeled, frisbee'd and smoked the days away.

We played pool nearly every day, and by the end of it we were getting half decent. Jack and I finally accepted that our unbeaten run was going to come to an end, but not before seeing off 3 more Thai pairs.

The guys were originally only there for one night, but we persuaded them/they persuaded themselves to stay for one more, which we didn't say at the time but we were so happy they did, because in all these situations you never know when you are going to see each other again.

They guys left, and we stayed in paradise for another couple of days. And then begrudgingly we also had to leave, after so much relaxation, we prepared ourselves for the next leg of our journey. Up and east to Koh Tao. The place we always wanted to see.

But if you take one holiday destination away from this blog, then so far, please let it be Railay.
They know they want to be fairly touristy, so there are bars, restaurants, water sports etc. But they don't have the tourists in Railay, to charge too much yet, and if I'm honest, Kels and I saw 10 other tourists during the duration of our 5 days there.

We booked the boat, bus, boat journey to Koh Tao, and now we we wait and see.

Love to all. Next update soon!

xx