A tiny beach village with a long stretch of golden sand, interrupted only by palm trees and a few rows of beautiful little huts. Surrounded by beautiful cliffs, no roads, separated from the bustle of the rest of the world, just peace. How does that sound? Pretty cool, right? A climber’s paradise by all accounts!

Well, in Tonsai we learned that the reality pretty is shit actually, but the experience of learning this was a hilarious one that we will remember for a long time!

Tonsai and it’s sister bay of Railay are known as the premier climbing destination in SE Asia. World famous, our Instagram feeds are permanently adorned by stunning pictures of climbers on these spectacular cliffs over golden beaches. We’d spoken to many climbers on our travels, who’d told us how amazing this place is, and how we’d never want to leave. I had high hopes.

Ness had read some non-climbing blogs and had lower expectations, hearing stories of ‘tonsai tummy’ and rife dengue fever.

A week later, in a hut with no electricity, while Ness’ skin was falling off her arms from an infected bite, she picked up her bath towel and a cockroach fell onto her leg to scurry off into her clothes…. we were clear that Tonsai had fallen spectacularly under both of our expectations.

We left you at the end of a wonderful two weeks in Ko Tao, getting on a sleeper ferry. It was a remarkably pleasent trip to Surat Thani, though we were sad when we arrived at 5am. Getting off and discussing where we got the ‘Pattaya’ bus, a scruffy guy grabbed us and put us on his truck. All a bit suspicious, but that’s how things work here. We thought we’d let it run but be prepared to jump out of the back of the truck if it all gets weird. We arrived at a bus station, which felt like a bit of a result, and were lined up in front of a guy in a leather jacket at a desk.

Inevitavbly he pointed out that the ticket I had didn’t take us all the way to our destination, and that we should pay him more money. It didn’t scream legitimacy, but he had a point, and looking online we found that his option was cheaper than a taxi, so we decided to chance it. Two months ago this would have seemed like madness, but we were fairly comfortable with it now, most of the time it works out ok, the rest of the time you lose a bit of money but take it on the chin.

A minivan arrived and we packed ourselves in, falling quickly asleep. I woke as we neared out destination, in a karst landscape reminding me of Lan Ha bay in Northern Vietnam. Beautiful spires of rock soaring out of lush green jungle lined our route to Krabi.

Tonsai is on the mainland, but is surrounded by steep cliffs so is only accessible by boat. We arrived at the ferry dock and were told that the boat leaves once there are 10 passengers. At 9am in low season, we had a long wait!

Ferry isn’t the right word, the ferry is actually a longtail boat. These boats are pretty cool, long thin wooden boats, with a big open engine on the back and the propellor on a shaft about 5m long behind the boat. This makes it very manouverable and also very fast.

We flew across the water and arrived at Tonsai in just a few minutes. The boat stopped about 50m our from the beach, and we were basically thrown over the side. Bags on backs, we waded ashore and found ourselves on an empty beach. ….what do we do now?

Behind the beach were palm trees, with a few part built huts scattered amongst them. It was a really beautiful place, unspoilt and simple.

We knew from research that at the other end of the beach was the climbers’ bar, called Freedom Bar, so we set off down the long beach.

We arrived and found ourselves as the only ones there. Ness grabbed a drink and got chatting to the locals behind the bar, and I wandered off to speak to some climbers I’d seen further down the beach. They gave me the low down on where to go to find accomodation. When I got back to Ness, she’d been given a similar account by the bar staff, so I left her there and went off in search of a room.

This is where our destinies parted from that of some other climbers here, the ones we would normally have a similar experience to. There was a lovely place to stay called Tonsai Bay Resort, and though it was a bargain on a holiday budget, as backpackers it would cost our entire day’s budget to stay there, so I had to discount it. I therefore moved on down the road.

Road is a loose term, this was a single strip of tarmac running through the jungle with wooden huts on one side and an apparently pointless tall concrete wall on the other. The wall was adorned with what I’ll describe as ‘art’, and will leave you to appreciate.

The accomodation in this area was much cheaper, £2 – £5 a night for a bungalow…. great! By bungalow, I mean a wooden shack containing a mosquito net, a bed and in some cases running water. The quality of workmanship meant that the distinction between inside and outside was pretty loose.

The entire village of Tonsai was simply strange. In high season I hear that it is heaving with climbers, a great atmosphere, but for now it was a ghost town. In an hour of walking around I saw people in a few of the accomodation offices, and a couple of wasted white folk laying on benches. It was just eerie, a ghost town.

Returning to Ness, I gave her the low down. We discussed that beside Tonsai was the exotic resort of Railay, and Ness suggested that we might like to stay there instead. It was just a short trek through the jungle and over a rocky buttress. Guess who got to go and check it out??

This mug found himself in the jungle, following paths towards Railay. After a fork I heard someone shout to me ‘dude, this way!’ I turned around and walked back to meet someone who introduced himself as Albert from France (I feel that his name can’t actually have been Albert as that’s about as un-French as it gets, my memory must have changed this somewhat, but I’m going with it). He explained that the path I’d been on was the high tide path, but as the tide was lower we could take a shortcut. Great! I followed him and all went well until we came down towards the beach again. Turns out the tide wasn’t as low as he’d thought. In his flip flops and board shorts he just waded through the water over the sharp rocks. In trainers and trousers I didn’t fancy this, but having a bit of skill on rocks I took the alternative of climbing along the rocks beside the water to bypass the wading. I’d estimate it as a 5c traverse (on an overhang), interesting in trainers.

Railay was a thriving resort, streets lined with Rasta bars and trendy coffee stops. I checked out the accomodation and found that it would bankrupt us to stay there, so I went back to Ness, and we chose the wooden huts.

There is no mains water here, just collected rainwater, the same as Ko Tao except that they make no effort of cleanliness or heating. This means that the showers are cold and smell like rotten eggs. There is also no mains electricity, just a generator for each bungalow complex, which they turn on for a few hours overnight. Having stayed in some quite nice places recently, we put it down to being a healthy realignment of expectations.

The next day we went climbing. We went to Railay to climb on this first day, as the easier climbing was there and we wanted to get warmed up. The area we went to was the one used by all of the guiding companies, so it was quite well maintained, and the routes were good. We had a great few climbs. It was interesting though to watch the guides beside us, belaying tourists who had paid for their services. Their safety standards wouldn’t pass a novice climbing test in the UK, and I felt pretty terrible at the thought that unwitting tourists were here every day paying to be taught and kept safe by these guys. They gave me a good shock at one moment as well… While I was belaying Ness I heard them shouting and pointing behind me. I looked around and they shouted in English ‘crocodile’. I looked around in confusion until my eyes locked on a 2m long lizard a few feet away from me, staring at me as I held Ness’ safety rope. I quickly realised that the lizard wasn’t one that was going to hurt me but it didn’t stop the jolt of adrenaline and racing heart from firing through me.

After a night in our hot, sweaty, mosquito ridden room, in which Ness had reached into the wash bag to find a lizard hiding there (quite the reaction from her!), we looked forward to another day of climbing.

And then we discovered the issue that would demolish our hopes of this place being a climbing dream.

We were here to do what is known as ‘sport climbing’, where metal bolts are drilled into the rock and you climb up clipping into these. It avoids the need to carry and place your own protection (like nuts and camming devices) into the rock. There are many issues around metal bolts in a seawater environment, which I won’t bore you with, and they have addressed the issues in some respects here, but part of their solution is using tatty old bits of rope instead of steel.

This is as insane as it sounds. In the world of traditional climbing, you do see this stuff around, and we call it ‘tat’. The sort of stuff you might clip into because why not, but you’re putting your own protection in as well. The idea of putting your life in the hands of a bit of tatty fabric that has been there for an unknown period of time, exposed to an unknown amount of UV light, saltwater and possibly countless falls, goes against everything. Yet everyone here does it, and it is described as a climbing Mecca. We found ourselves with barely any routes we could actually climb.

We could tolerate the sketchy living conditions on the basis of the climbing being great, and the rock was great, but we just couldn’t put our trust in the safety of it. We spent the rest of our time here questioning why everyone described this place as so amazing. The first answer was that if you were climbing at a high grade (comfortably working across the f7’s), something below professional climber but requiring a high level of training and practice, then those routes were far better protected.

Over the next few days we realised the second reason. Most of the people here were high as a kite. Drug use here isn’t just prevalent, it’s more common than drinking. Get off your head at night then climb the next afternoon….no wonder it all seemed amazing!

(I will note that there were a few people around who were clearly not into the drug scene, it wasn’t everyone).

Ness found this stay particularly enjoyable, as she is like a mosquito beacon. In an area where mosquitoes are a big issue, some of them carrying dengue fever, they are all drawn to Ness. When I get bitten, a small bite comes up for a few hours then fades. When Ness gets bitten, huge swellings stay for days. It got worse here, as some bites became blisters, which in the rough, damp, dirty environment got infected. This left big open wounds across one arm and leg, looking a lot like her skin was just falling off.

Ness also has a fear of encountering snakes on walks through the jungle….not an irrational fear. One afternoon we were walking through the jungle to find a crag, me in front. We were descending around some boulders and I went to put my right hand in a little bowl shaped recess on top of a rock, to lower my body down. As my had was a few cm from it, I looked at it and saw a small black snake curled up in it, head raised and looking at me. I stopped for a moment and decided to wait for Ness and escort her past, but I also thought that she’d probably rather not know what just happened. I paused, looked back at her and asked if she wanted to go in front. She looked at me with suspicion and said ‘umm….why’. My answer of ‘no reason’ didn’t seem to convince her, I think she saw a cheeky smirk on my lips. After a few moments of her looking at me in a way that said ‘I know what you’re up to’, I suggested we turned around.

Cockroaches and snakes, lizards and leprosy, mosquitoes and moist clothing, we decided to cut our two week stay short, and leave after only 6 days. Before we depart from this surreal place, I should raise a few highlights.

Towards the end, we found a bit of wall where there were a handful of routes that we felt safe climbing, and they were great routes! The rock here is deserving of the reputation, it’s amazing to climb, just a shame that safety comes a long way behind.

Secondly, we were welcomed into the family of the Pyramid Cafe. With the best coffee in the village, this place is apparently heaving in high season, but for now it was very quiet and they seemed to love having us. Chai, Nee and Jeremy were wonderfully welcoming, and so generous to us with their time and their food. We were always loaded up with far more food than we’d paid for, ready to spend a day looking at climbs we would decide to not climb.

On the last evening we decided to swap roles and had a great little cooking lesson from Nee, then on our last morning after we hugged goodbye, she presented us with a bag full of food to keep us going on our journey. They were just wonderful to us.

Our next stop was the old colonial town of Georgetown in Malaysia. Apparently a diverse melting pot of cultures with a great vibe, we were intrigued as to what was coming. We were however sad and apprehensive to be leaving Thailand, having been in this lovely country for a month and a half.

Nonetheless, we were desperate to escape Tonsai, and things looked good for Malaysia since Tonsai had set the bar so low that a sofa bed in Skegness would seem like luxury.

Tonsai had certainly changed our expectations of comfort and cleanliness. It had been a ridiculous experience that we will not rush to repeat, but we made a lot of memories that we will laugh about for years to come!

We got a morning boat from Tonsai to the nearby town of Ao Nang, and found the first bus company, begging them to take us away. Barely fifteen minutes later we were in a minivan on the way out of town and to the Malaysian border. We had a 10 hour journey ahead of us in a cramped van, but we had big grins to have escaped!!

If you’ve enjoyed our suffering whilst reading this, then you might also enjoy reading about the better times on our journey. Take a look at our blog library for more stories about where we’ve been.