Our first thoughts when we arrived at Railay were 'what a dump'. We had spent the previous day on a bus from Phuket to Krabi with holiday blues, by the time we arrived there were no more boats heading to Railay. We found a cheap hotel and spent the night there before getting a boat in the morning.

Railay is made up of a thin strip of land with a beach on the west and mangroves on the east. The west is the expensive side and the east cheaper. We arrived on the cheaper side and found somewhere to stay. It was the most basic of rooms with shared bathroom, if you could call them that. They were squatters with a cold shower on the wall and full of cockroaches, by far the worst bathrooms we have had.

Once we dropped our bags off we headed to the west side of Railey which was beautiful. There is a long golden beach surrounded by huge rock formations, we found a nice restaurant on the beach for some lunch just as the heavens opened.

The main thing to do here is rock climbing, we were planning on doing some but both of us really couldn't be bothered, we just wanted to relax, suppose we were still in holiday mode. Luckily on our second day the sun came out so we sat on the beach and cooled down with mango fruit shakes.

We managed to book a ticket from here to Koh Tao, our next destination, which meant getting up at 5.30 to catch a boat, then a minibus, then a big bus and then another ferry. Because of this we got an early night and vowed to get some better accommodation in Koh Tao.