It's all about the weekends

I know I had teased you all in my last blog with the promise of an update about my fascinating work life here in Bangkok, but I’ve decided it would be far more interesting to talk about my recent weekend activities, the most recent being a long weekend in Krabi, which is a province in the south of Thailand. Last Friday the school just decided to give everyone the day off. In theory this was because the summer holiday was a bit shorter than usual, but for us new staff it didn’t make any difference, so in essence we just get a few extra long weekends during the year – score! And the first one was this last weekend, so on Thursday afternoon about 10 of us new staff left school at 3pm and went straight to the airport to get our flight down to Krabi, then a bus to the coast, then a boat to Railay Bay. Because we arrived at low tide, we actually had to wade the last 100 metres from the boat to the shore, and then we got in golf carts to get driven to our hotel. We finally arrived about 7:30. Railay Bay is a very small but very beautiful peninsula which can only be reached by boat, as there are no roads there. There’s just a handful of bungalow-style hotels and a bunch of cliffy mountains (although I was assured by the smarty-pants teachers that they are too small to be called mountains, but they couldn’t be called hills – see the photo below and you’ll see what I mean).







It was a fantastic spot to spend a few days. The only disappointment was that we got a lot of rain while we were there. It didn’t stop us from swimming or relaxing or having massages or eating and drinking, but it did stop us from doing rock-climbing, which is one of the main attractions of the area. I did do one climb on the Saturday, which wasn’t a proper rock-climb, more a scramble up a steep rock face, which was really good. There was a great view from the top.


The trip back on Sunday was rather exciting. The weather was the worst it had been all weekend – very strong winds and very heavy rain – when we had to leave to head to the airport. So, we got in one of the little long-tail boats (like this one) to get back to the mainland.







We could only find one boat driver who was willing to take us, which we should have taken as a bad sign. We got some garbage bags from the hotel to put our bags in so they wouldn’t get soaked and we all put on some very cheap, pastel-coloured ponchos in a vain attempt to avoid getting too wet ourselves. Needless to say, they did nothing but make us look like idiots covered with coloured cling wrap – we still got soaked. The boat trip back was fairly rough-going. About 10 minutes into the trip, the boat engine died, leaving us rocking up and down rather helplessly in the waves. The boat driver tried several times to get the engine started again, to no avail. I had visions of us being stuck out there for a long time, as there were no other boats around (quite wisely it could be argued). However, just when things looked bleak, the engine started again and we were back on our way again. The rest of our cruise was less eventful, just ridiculously wet and windy. Once we got back on land, the rest of the trip back to Bangkok was a breeze. The only sobering moment was just after I got home and heard about the plane crash in Phuket – an awful tragedy that seems to have hit Thailand fairly hard. Phuket is not too far from where we had been staying and I couldn’t help but feel incredibly grateful that the fairly atrocious weather in that area had been no more than an inconvenience to us.


The previous weekend I got to play tourist and visited a couple of temples and the Grand Palace in Bangkok, which were all mighty impressive. You can see some photos of the huge Reclining Buddha statue below. You can see some more photos of this and of Railay Bay on my flickr page – see link to the right.









I also went to see a band – Funeral for a Friend. They were quite good. The mostly Thai crowd were very appreciative and there was a pond in the middle of the club, which was very Thai. Alas, I have been assured that seeing decent western bands in Bangkok is something of a rarity. This weekend I’m going away again with a big group from school to an island called Ko Samet, which is not too far from Bangkok. I know it’s sounding like life over here is all trips away and sight-seeing, but I am actually quite busy at work as well. However, I don’t want to ruin this blog entry by talking too much about work, so to all of you who only want to hear about work stuff, I’m going to dangle that particular carrot a little longer. Cheers!