Railay and the Penis Cave

This was one of our most fun (funnest?? idk) days of the trip.  Railay and Tonsai are separated by this bit of cliff/jungle and to get between the two you can do the 15 minute hike through it.  Quite a hike to do in flip-flops.

Ahhh the first peek onto the other side.

I guess I didn't take a picture of actual Railay but you can imagine a white sandy beach full of higher-end tourists of all shapes and sizes.

We didn't know where we were going so we wandered through paths that went past these neat trees and smaller caves (there are a lot of caves in this post).

We saw one little cave off the path with naught but a ladder leading into it.  No one was around to tell us no so we ditched our shoes and scrambled up.  It was rad and I love that there are weird caves without safety railings all over them somewhere in the world. 

I almost didn't include that picture of me in a bikini because idk.. body issues?  Even though I work out a lot I'm still working on accepting that things are different after having a baby.  But like I said, I was determined to wear a swimsuit for most of the trip and Thailand is an excellent place to do that.  Not to mention tourists in swimsuits really do come in all shapes and sizes on beaches outside of the US.  I find the old people with wrinkly tans and tiny speedos a little endearing, they may not be a size 0, but dammit they are going to enjoy the beach.

Diamond Cave, much bigger and beautiful.  It was full of bats and the sound was lovely.

There was a really neat cave by Ko Lanta that we could have seen but someone told me that parts of it are very small and you have to roll on the floor to get to the next bit.  When I heard that I was like nooo, I will pass on that experience.  The thought alone made me very nervous.

The last part of the walk was along this boardwalk, past the beach on one side and restaurants on the other.

And finally we come to the Penis Cave!  It has an official name, but let's call it what it is.  I took this picture to also highlight the woman trying really hard to meditate in tourist central.  The other dude who looks like he might be meditating was an old Russian yogi who was in ridiculous shape.  He got like 10 random tourists of various nationalities to do yoga with him on the beach.

Local fisherman leave the penis statues (lingams) as an offering to the ghost of a princess who haunts the cave.  Just what every woman wants, a few thousand penis statues!

An opportunely inserted candle.

It just keeps going, can't decide if I like the gold or the hot pink best.

Yikes.

"Oh look, that one has feet and a penis tail!" -Alec

I'm glad we did this walk in the morning before there were too many people.  I swam out to that cove on the left side of the picture, it opened up to a cave with a shallow pool and big rocks for climbing. with a opening through to the other side of the cliffs.  Beautiful doesn't even touch it.