Meeting a cool couple the night before, I take off back to Railay with my new climbing partners Lambo and Stephanie from California. We head for Railay East, and find the 123 Wall. I was stoked to get back on the end of a rope, and yet more excited since it was the couples first experience climbing limestone. Every few moves up the featured wall, Lamberto would yell out: "Can you believe this?! This rock is bananas!" in an oddly Australian accent, only to make it a few more moves to a more impressive formation and yell: "Barnacles! Am I dreaming right now?" After two climbs each, the tide had risen so much that our sandy first belay spot was completely underwater. We made to leave, until the couple beside us asked us if we had any interest in deep water soloing. Having talked about it all day we affirmed our interest, and met Denis and Anja, who have been sailing in their boat 'La Bulle' for the past 8 months, traveling, exploring, and climbing. We confirmed a time to meet the following day, and said our good-byes.
After watching 3 men basejump a couple times off one of the most prominent cliffs by the beach (above Freedom Bar), our friends arrived on their little 3 man dinghy called Macky powered by a 2.5 horse motor. The 5 of us piled in, and rowed out past the reef to start the engine, a hard worker named Toby.
Our first stop was Ao Nang Tower, which had an incredibly tasty roof climb over water, sadly, the tide was low, and rocks lay in some areas only a meter below the surface. We found a place to climb out of the boat, and mantled up onto a rock shelf that was the start of a bolted climb up the tower. We climbed a chossy, dirty pitch, lowered our climbing gear into the boat, then jumped off the belay ledge into the sea - Denis rappelling (abseiling) into the boat.
At the very end of the peninsula separating Ao Nang and Tonsai, there is a massive overhanging roof that we decided to stop at. The first 3 meters of rock exposed from the water was pockmarked with razor-sharp edges and keeping the boat still in the choppy water while the climber tries to boulder out of the boat caused a few new cuts to the hands. The rock was slimy and wet - probably from the past days thundershowers seeping in from above - and the climbing technical and pumpy, but the water landing from 15ft/4m up was very reassuring as well as refreshing. We moved the boat out from under the roof to a wall called Spiderman Wall, and tried our battered bodies on a last round of deep water bouldering.
A storm that never hit us had been blowing considerable wind and rain to our immediate West, and the water was choppier on the way back. We stopped at an intermediate beach to bail out water from Macky, and explored the Jurassic-sized plants and trees on this hidden climbing spot. Our last stop before shoring the boat for lunch, was the weather-tattered slackline suspended 10ft/3m above the water between two large boulders. As I have mentioned before, limestone has the potential to be razor sharp, and though I eased my way carefully up the cheese-grater sides, still managed to slice my foot decently in two spots. This didn't stop me from getting on the line 4 times, but it will be a hindrance these next few days. Once the boat was beached up on the West end of Tonsai beach, Lambo, Stephanie and I treated our sailing friends to a meal at our favourite restaurant nearby - Legacy. Toby was rewarded a nice lunch/dinner break, before having to make the return trip to La Bulle.