Like I said, Tonsai is a great place! There’s a friendly community, mostly made up of climbers. The population is small (probably under 100 permanent, 400 transient at this time of year) and it’s almost completely isolated at night because the hike from Railay becomes significantly more difficult and dangerous even with a flashlight, and longtail boats don’t run.

There are about 25 longtail boats based in Tonsai. Other vehicles include: 3 pickup trucks, about 6 motorcycles with cargo beds, and about 10 regular motorcycles. The longtail boats are moored with old climbing ropes, of course.

I’ve learned that when renting a climbing rope, it’s important to check the length and make sure the middle point is marked (as well as checking for excess wear and abrasion, which you should do with your own rope anyway.) Also, a reminder: always tie a knot in the other end of your rope when leading. I’m very glad I did

After climbing, Tonsai has a decent nightlife. It’s not a spring break-style party like you’ll find on other beaches, and there’s almost no dancing. It’s mostly people sitting around and talking, and an occasional live band – which is more my scene anyway.

A couple of hints of Burning Man are around: there are generators everywhere at night, random bars with random decorations (though they charge for drinks), and firespinners! Some of the resident climbers have taken up firespinning in the evenings, and they’re really good. There are also slackliners, and one guy (at least) who combines both!

Reggae music is everywhere, and Bob Marley seems more popular than the King of Thailand (anyone who has ever been to Thailand will be amazed by this last statement.)

The food in Tonsai is great! The cheapest places to eat are the most popular. These are the "chicken ladies", two restaurants based out of shacks on opposite sides of the main road. They have big communal tables where people are (as usual) happy to talk to strangers. The most common morning food is sticky rice with mango (and there’s a recipe in the climbing guidebook for when you get home.) The most common morning greeting is "are you climbing today?"

Everyone lives in a hut: maybe with power, maybe with running water. Nobody complains. Everyone just wants to climb!

This trip was organized by Basecamp Tonsai and they did a great job. We had a longtail boat to take us to the cliffs, which were near Chicken Island. We climbed at one spot in the morning, ate lunch on the beach at Chicken Island, then climbed at a different spot in the afternoon. The details were well thought out. They had a kayak to ferry you between the longtail and the cliff, both because longtails aren’t very manuverable and to prevent climbers from falling into the longtail (ouch!) Some climbs were equipped with ladders to make getting out of the kayak easier, and some were equipped with chalk bags at the start.

In the morning, I only climbed the intro route, which was a grade 5 traverse followed by a 6a diagonal to a ledge 10m above the water. (10m is considered safe – you can hit the water any way without injury.) One of the guys climbed a 7a to 20m up, which was impressive to watch!

In the afternoon, I managed a 6a traverse on my second try, and got up all but the last move of a 6b stalactite. (Signs you’re among climbers: the Thai guide who speaks about 300 words of English knows the word "stalactite.") I wasn’t climbing as well as usual. Mostly, I found it inconvenient to climb while wet without much chalk. Oh well, it was fun.

All in all, it was a great day. Between climbs, I got in some swimming and snorkeling, chatted with climbers, and watched some great climbing. At one point in the afternoon, one of the boatmen climbed most of a ridiculous crack (grade 8c if memory serves), fell off, then spent about 15 minutes traversing all over the face. An amazing climber!

So if you’re a climber travelling in Thailand, head out on a Basecamp Tonsai Deepwater Solo trip! I think it’s best to do it as your last day in Railay/Tonsai though, so you have more time to get used to the local rock and build some strength.

I took a lot of photos. I’ve been giving out cards with my website, and I want to give everyone a few photos of themselves climbing if I can. So check out the highlights or the full set of 60 photos.

The place is technically part of the Thai mainland but it feels like an island because the only way in or out is by boat. It’s also (as I noted yesterday) isolated even from Railay – it’s difficult to walk there at high tide, and dangerous at night. Power is from generators and Internet is by satellite. Prices for everything are about double the prices in Krabi or Bangkok.

Yesterday, Robin and I finally made it climbing. After checking out most of the climbing shops, we settled on Basecamp Tonsai, which is the biggest and seems to be the best. They’re pretty much in the middle of Tonsai and they’re pretty much climber central – as well as the shop, there’s a shaded deck where you can chill, meet other climbers (although any restaurant or bar is also good for that), write notes on the whiteboard, and so on.

We joined a guided tour for the day – I wanted to get a feel for the area, and Robin wanted some top roping before jumping into lead climbing. (Most routes here are sport lead, in other words you climb from the ground clipping your rope into bolts along the way. With a guide, the guide does the leading then leaves the rope in place so you can top rope, which is safer and easier.) It was a great day! We climbed a few routes of varying difficulty in the morning, then headed up through a cave, rapelled down from the cave’s upper entrance, and climbed some more! The guide, Tong, was excellent, and there were two other climbers: a buff German guy trying the sport for the first time, and a girl from BC who climbs at about my level.

The rock here is excellent. I can see why people come here from all over the world just to climb. It’s limestone, but it’s nothing like the limestone in Kingston, Ontario. This stuff is pocked with holes of all sizes, covered in stalactites, and generally full of places to put your hands and feet. The downside is the rock is sometimes sharp on your hands (and rope!) A lot of the cliffs (especially on Tonsai) are also overhanging, which makes climbing harder. Railey has a good selection of mostly-vertical stuff so people head there for easier climbing..

Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with the girl (Mia), and we’re going to rent some gear and head out on our own. Robin is going to do a 1 day outdoor leading course. Or that’s the hope anyway. Robin and I both got sick today with an ailment the locals call Tonsai Tummy Robin hasn’t left the hut all day, and I just left to buy food and drinks. We’ll be OK eventually though, and today was going to be a rest day anyway – I haven’t climbed routes since Christmas so I need to recover from yesterday.

Photos are here (of climbing, not of Tonsai Tummy!)

After our "donkey" (Malaysian train) ride to Wakaf Bahru, we spent the night in Khota Bharu. The guidebook was right – Khota Bahru accomodation is filthy (regardless of price.) But we found a place where the bed at least was clean and free of bedbugs to spend the night.

The next morning, we took a local bus to the Thai border and crossed over to Sungai Kolok. A nasty surprise at the border: they’re only giving out 15-day entry stamps when you cross by land, not the 30 days we were promised by our guidebook (and still available when entering by air.) So our plans will have to change… oh well, they were only plans.

From Sungai Kolok, we took a second class Thai train to Hat Yai. I’ve been on a third class Thai train and the only difference is hard vs. soft seats – still no aircon, but that’s fine. The cars were white steel on the outside, mango orange-painted wood on the inside, so I declared the train to be a mango. Overall the mango was much older than the donkey, but better maintainted.

It was about 5 hours to Hat Yai, then a tuktuk ride took us to the bus station. Most of the buses were actually minibuses going to all sorts of places, but Krabi is on the way to Phuket, which is a big enough destination to merit a big bus. And what a bus it was! This bus was, in fact, a kitten. A pink kitten. I decided this because it had beckoning cat air fresheners inside. It was a double decker with seats on top and a padded floor below holding baggage, someone’s new motor scooter, and overflow passengers. Overall, the nicest bus I’ve ever taken, especially since it had aircon. Other features included DVDs of Thai music videos on screen during the 5 hour ride and a green fluorescent tube in the engine compartment – definite style points. On a rest stop, I watched the shiny Mercedes engine for a while and noticed that they were carrying several spare fan belts. Smart bus company!

Once in Krabi, another adventure: at this time we were travelling with another backpacking couple we met in Sungai Kolok. The bus stop was in a remote area but we didn’t trust the aggressive man who met us right off the bus and told us it was 6 km to downtown and he would take us there for 200 baht (about half the cost of our 5 hour bus trip!) He would’t budge on the price, so we started walking. And walked, and walked. After well over 1km of walking, a moto driver stopped for us. These are drivers who will take you around town on the back of a motorcycle – very popular with the locals for short trips. He realized there was no way we could take motos with our heavy backpacks, and helpfully called some friends with a taxi. About 10 minutes later, the taxi (which was a pickup truck with passenger benches in the bed) showed up. We didn’t even try to haggle over the 200 baht price this driver also wanted.

He took us to the hostel, no problem, and we paid through the passenger side window. The driver’s ~5 year old daughter actually took the money, held up by his wife. This was clearly a family business! All in all, it was a good lesson in 3rd world economics: sometimes you can bargain, but sometimes you just have to pay the 200 baht to get where you’re going.

The hostel was called Good Dream – an oasis of sanity in this crazy country. The owner spoke excellent English and had a wide varitety of opinionated information on Krabi area attractions, with prices. The room was cheap and spotlessly clean. The breakfast was not the cheapest but it was excellent – the closest thing I’ve had to a trucker’s breakfast in over 2 months.

Onwards from Krabi, we took a longtail boat to Railey Beach – 150 baht each. The boatman wanted 400 baht more to go to Ton Sai so we declined. Various sources said it was a 15 minute walk to Ton Sai Beach, which is the area with the most climbers and the cheapest accomodation (coincidence? I think not.) Various sources were wrong. There’s a 15 minute walk between the beaches that’s doable at low tide, but not with heavy backpacks because of slippery rocks, and anyway this was high tide. There’s a 30-45 minute overland walk which we tried to find, but on the way there we passed a couple of climbers who told us there was another way: a path near the low tide walk where you scramble up a steep hill and down the other side. It took us about 30 minutes to find the path though, and Robin couldn’t do it with her backpack so I had to do it 3 times, twice with a load!

So, finally, Tonsai. I bought a big jug of water at the first bar on the beach and we drank most of it on the spot. Then we found a cheap but decent hut: it has a shower, electric lights, and a fan. Compared to my usual climbing trips where I’m camping, this hut is luxurious I think we’ll stay here for a while.

The jungle line was definitely a good way to do just that. From Gemas, we boarded another "donkey" (Malaysian train) and rode it all day. The scenery was amazing! Lush jungle on both sides, palm oil plantations, and then the mountains, which was lush jungle plus amazing rock outcroppings.

Photos are here. Taking great photos from a train window is almost impossible, but these are decent at least

Please don’t take my recent negativity to mean I’m not having fun. I’m enjoying it, and hopefully so are you

Robin and I arrived late on Friday night to find the public transit system already shut down, so we took a taxi to our hostel.

I spent most of our trip wondering what there is to do in Singapore other than play tourist and shop. I still haven’t figured that one out. Fortunately, there are a few interesting things to do as a tourist, like the awesome Bird Park (all sorts of birds, of course) and the Night Safari (where we saw sleeping lions, hunting tigers, etc.)

The weather in Singapore is about a billion degrees and humid, like the rest of southeast Asia, and it somehow manages to feel a lot like a third world country: there are people selling junk on the street amid Lexuses and Mercedes. Things randomly don’t work (like ticketing for the local "rapid" transit, which is a giant pile of fail.) Everything seems to be either shoddy or owned by a megacorp. So from that point of view, it’s been a good experience: a place to get used to the heat, humidity, and general inconvenience of life in this part of the world without any actual danger to us or our property.

And now we’re on a train that took us across the border to Malaysia and will hopefully take us to Gemas. At the station, yet another sign we’re not in Japan anymore: the train was over an hour late leaving Singapore, and now seems to be running an hour behind schedule. Welcome to the third world! I declared to Robin that this train is not a kitten (since kittens are of course the embodiment of awesome in the world.) She told me it was a donkey, and I’m inclined to agree.

We’re hoping to spend the night in Gemas then get up early to taking the Jungle Line to Khota Bharu, which borders Thailand. From there, train, bus, then boat to Railay Beach and rock climbing!

[*] Nothing in the first paragraph of this entry should be taken as fact. Obviously.

Alright.

To everyone who visits temples and shrines and shows complete disrespect for them, like the jerks who were at the Daibutsu in Kamakura: fuck you. I’m sure the Daibutsu doesn’t care – he’s been meditating for 1000 years and he’s seen worse than you in that time. But the Buddhists who visit him to worship certainly do. Would you act this way in a church back home?

And to the people posing for photos in front of the atomic bomb dome in Hiroshima: fuck you with a spoon. This is a monument to an absolute atrocity and it’s fine to want to show that to your friends, but why do you need to be in the photo too? "Hey, never mind the dome. Look at me!"

OK, I’m done here.

Kyoto was a great place to spend our last few days in Japan. I took Robin to Kurama and Kibune, we visited some of Kyoto’s temples and shrines (including the awesome Fushimi Inari and the Tofuku-ji zen garden) and made it to the flea market at Kitano Tenmangu shrine, where Robin bought a skirt.

Kyoto is a wonderful place – so many traditional-style buildings and yet so modern too. And the weather cooperated: 3 days of sun! Strange that we got good weather in Kyoto but not Tokyo…

Now we’re on UA 875 to Singapore. It feels weird to be leaving Japan after so long, and weird to be on United in a place so foreign. So well, that’s it. Goodbye Japan, and see you again someday!

After finding Caroline’s place, about a 15 minute walk from the train station, we all headed to dinner at the best kaiten restaurant in Japan. Kaiten (conveyor belt sushi) generally doesn’t have a great reputation. A frient once compared it to the McDonald’s of sushi. But this place was a shining exception, as one might expect in a prefecture renowned for its seafood. After dinner, Caroline took us to a small izakaya, again pretty different from the ones in Tokyo. People were as friendly as in my last small izakaya in Kagoshima, but it also had an amazing selection of fresh fish in an icebox and extremely fresh fish in a saltwater tank. We didn’t stay long because Robin and I were tired from a day spent on trains.

The next morning was a tea ceremony! Caroline drove us to a nearby town where some of her Japanese friends were practicing the art of sencha-do, or Chinese-inspired green tea ceremony. As we learned, this is quite different from matcha-do, which is what most people think of as a "Japanese tea ceremony." The basics are the same: the host makes tea for the guests, who enjoy it and each other’s company. But the details… well… the steps are quite different. Also, these ladies did it fairly informally. One of them had been studying sencha-do for a while, and the rest were learning from her. They did a great job both of making the tea and of making us feel welcome! All in all a wonderful experience.

Then we headed to a the local department store where some special needs students Caroline teaches were having a fundraising sale, wandered around a local park, and borrowed some bikes to explore the coastline and rivers of Masuda.

And then onwards to Hiroshima. Thanks, Caroline!