Ton Sai

One week really isn't long enough to fully experience a place, its geography, its food, and its people. So we decided ahead of time that the Thai portion of this trip was going to be focused on relaxing .. a full-on vacation. Ao Ton Sai provided the perfect eden-like setting for just that. We only stayed in Ton Sai for three nights, but eons seemed to pass in that time. The tropical paradise (refer to Di Caprio's 'The Beach,' filmed on a nearby island), complete with multiple species of monkeys, tropical leafy plants and flowers galore, and world-class white-sand beaches, was like a dream .. a world apart from our lives in Portland the week before.

There are no roads to the relatively undeveloped Ton Sai, or the nearby beaches of slightly more developed Railey. Long-tail boats act as taxis between these mainland beaches and Ao Nang, the touristy beach-hub of the small Krabi Peninsula. Powered by diesel engines pulled from old trucks, these long-tail boats (like big gondolas) create quite a racket on the main beaches, but in Ton Sai, only a few pulled in and out each hour.

Ton Sai is surrounded by lush jungle and jaw-droppingly beautiful limestone karst topography. The beach and surrounding area is perhaps best known as a destination for world-class climbers, and everywhere we looked, masters of the sport were making their way up 5.10-5.13 pitches (6a-6d,e,f in the local ratings). There are bolts everywhere (many of them looked pretty sketchy), and anchors usually consisted of a sling wrapped through small natural tunnels the wind and salt had burrowed through the rock. Ashley and I came to Ton Sai with climbing shoes and harnesses, thinking that we might hook up with some other climbers who had a rope and draws. However, we soon realized that most of the climbing here was way over our heads, and we resigned to slightly less-extreme and significantly more relaxing pursuits like reading on the beach, sit-on-top kayaking around the nearby islands and headlands, eating copious amounts of delicious Thai food, and indulging in hours of Thai, foot, and oil massages.

The cost of living in Ton Sai is so low ($8-15/day for a bungalow with toilet, $2-5/meal, $10/hour massages) that many folks come to live and climb here for months or years on end. We talked to one climber from the States who had come over after getting laid off from his job in April, and was living on about $5/day. If I ever decide to focus my life on advancing my climbing skills, this place seems close to ideal.

Of course, there is no questioning that Ton Sai (and the entire region around Krabi and nearby Phu Ket) relies primarily on Western tourism to drive the local economy. Nearly all services are provided by low-paid Thai workers, while the vast majority of those enjoying these services hail from Europe, Australia, Canada, and the States. This juxtaposition was most apparent in West Railey Beach (Ton Sai's next door neighbor), where Europeans enjoyed 4 and 5 star accomodations near the beach, while many of the service workers who tended to them lived in small run-down shacks on the outskirts of the town. While this happens in every resort-oriented area I've ever been in, the phenomenon seemed amplified here because of the contrast in language and skin-color.

Regardless, knowing that this place exists will forever make me smile, and I look forward to the day we might return.