Day 25 of The Big Adventure, according to Sarah. 

We woke up around 9.30, clearly exhausted from our big day yesterday. We had heard lots of recommendations of Railay Beach and that there was some good sea kayaking around there so that was what we planned to do that day. 

We had both been having a little trouble with our eyelash extensions recently and had noticed they had started falling out leaving funny gaps. It was time to get them removed so before we headed to Railay we decided to try and find a salon that would remove them for us. We caught a bus into town – the same bus we had caught to Krabi town, just going in the opposite direction. 

We wandered around and found a place that would do it for us, they told us a little about the procedure, looked at our eyes and said ‘mmm it will take about an hour’

An hour?! We’d thought they’d just dab our eyes with some special chemical and they come right off. Apparently they had to pick each lash off individually in order not to damage our natural lashes. 

They ushered us into a back room and got us to lie on some massage beds. They got to work taping our lower eyelids down and then began what turned out to be a slow and painful process. Lauren was finished a lot quicker than me, because apparently her beautician had glued 5 eyelashes at a time so they came off quite easily in groups. Whereas my beautician had glued each eyelash to the roots of my eyelashes, which meant mine were a lot more stubborn to come off. After an hour, they finally announced they were all off and we could wash our faces and go on our way. 

It was so nice to be able to rub our eyes again. 

We wandered out into the midday sun and passed a restaurant called Tandori Nights – which we’d seen was recommended on trip advisor. They had a 20% off food deal on so we went in for lunch. 

2 sprites, a chicken korma (of course), some rice and a naan were ordered. They were over staffed so the service was hiiighly efficient. 

As soon as Lauren had lifted the last piece of naan from the plate – it hadn’t even reached her lips – the waiter was clearing the plate. 

We took this as our sign to leave and paid the bill pronto. 

We wandered down to the beach and found the ticket office for the longtail boats that would take us to Railay. We bought two returns and were told to wait. 

   
 When we had enough people to fill the boat, we all walked down onto the beach, waded into the sea and climbed into the boat. 

It was a 15 minute ride around the coast to Railay which was a nice secluded spot with nicer sand.

 We were both rather hot so headed straight into the sea to cool off. 

  We could both feel small stings on our bodies – but couldn’t see any jellyfish…? It remains a mystery. But all the same, it was rather uncomfortable so we got out pretty quickly. 

  
We headed along the beach to rent a sea kayak. We found somewhere reasonably priced and told the nice man we’d like to rent one for an hour. He gave us a dry bag to put all our important belongings in and sent us on our way. 

We pushed the sea kayak into the sea and both hopped in. We paddled around the coast and recognised the next beach along – it was where we’d watched sunset from the night before! 

 

 We paddled into a cave and, at this point we hadn’t quite perfected our steering technique. We were headed straight for an overhanging rock that was exactly at Lauren’s heads height. 

 

 Thankfully we weren’t going fast and she managed to push us away from it. Decapitation: avoided. We continued out of the cave and explored more of the coast.

   We paddled around some more impressive limestone Islands and decided it was probably time to head back. 

 

 When trying to find a spot on the beach to park our little sea kayak, we found that it was full of long tails. Not a single little gap for us. We ended up having to wait in a little queue until one of the longtails left so we could nip in. 

After that surprisingly strenuous activity we decided it was definitely time for a fruit shake – Lauren went for a strawberry, which to her upmost disappointment contained milk and was more or a milkshake, and I went for pineapple (no milk). 

We lazed in the sun and drifted in and out of sleep until the sun was about to set and we decided we should probably try and find a longtail boat to take us back to Au Nang. It took us another 15mins to get back and then we had to try and find a bus to take us back to JP. 

We hailed the first bus that came by but there was only one seat available on the, already crammed, benches. The driver said it was fine for two and told us to get in. The rest of the passengers looked alarmed and tried to budge up as best they could. I took a seat and told Lauren to sit on my lap – as the driver accelerated away I held onto her for dear life. 

Luckily, we were the first stop and arrived at JP backpackers in one peice. We said hello to Mum and asked if she could arrange a transfer to the airport for us tomorrow. She said she’d arrange a private taxi for us as the public bus was very unreliable. With that, we headed upstairs. 

We were both pretty shattered from the day, so we just had salad and cheese sandwiches for dinner and went to bed pretty early.