Tonsai Beach itself faces west so every night there’s a wonderful sunset to watch, if you don’t mind the mosquitoes. There’s also hordes of strong climbers on the beach walls during the last hour of daylight when it’s nice and cool for them to work on their projects. Many evenings we would stroll on the beach and watch the inspiring climbers work on mind boggling hard climbs.
Food
The cheap food stalls on this peninsula were “chicken mama’s” and a woman we dubbed “smiley lady”. Every morning I had delicious mango sticky rice and an iced coffee served by smiley lady to start my day. After a while she would see us walking down the street and would start making my breakfast for me giving me my plate when I came up to order. Now that’s service! We had initially gone to chicken mama’s but everyone there was perpetually cranky. After a large woman barked “WHO ORDER MANGO STICKY RICE?!?!” or whatever, she would bring your food to you with a scowl. Sometimes she would just stand at the counter and glare at you, and you’d have to run over to get your food before she threw it at you or something. So we quickly switched venues and enjoyed smiley service instead.
We were up most mornings by 730am so breakfast was never busy. On the other hand dinner time was always a bit of a gong show, we would typically choose the stall that had the least number of waiting customers. It took us about a week (we’re slow learners) to figure out the peak dinner time was right after sunset. So after a few 2 hour waits to get our dinner we started showing up before the rush. Many of the dinner dishes are quite spicy, so being a spiciness wimp, I was limited to a few dishes of either curried rice, pad thai or cashew chicken. All of which are delicious, but lose their allure after 3 weeks. Mick on the other hand continually tried the hot dishes and was always overwhelmed by the heat complaining “oh my god, it’s so spicy” throughout his whole meal and then of course was followed by further complaints the next morning. Man, men are ridiculous. Dessert, arguably my favourite feed, typically comprised of a 9pm bedtime snack of banana or apple filled thai pancakes from Mr. Pancake himself.
Climbing!
Both of our climbing has improved greatly over the past 3 weeks. I started off warming up on 5s, then working up to 6a+’s on lead. One of my lead highlights was Banana Hammock (6a+), an overhanging tuffa climb. Banana Hammock required a completely different climbing style than I ever get to climb at home. I’m not usually big on overhangs, but I had been feeling strong so I gave it a try. After a minor freakout on the crux, I pushed through and made it up to the terrifying top. A lot of the overhangs have the anchors just slightly out of reach so you’re forced to reach up and out to clip the draws behind you. Not always the best clipping stance when you’re all pumped. Banana Hammock had just this. It was an exciting lead.
A week later we were both feeling even stronger. So we headed up to Thaiwand wall, one of our favourites, and decided to lead Monkey Love (6b) another overhanging jug haul. Mick lead up first, putting up the draws for me, and cruised right up; only having to sit once when his foot was a little too effectively cammed. I was next and glided up to the last bolt, then freaked out at the exposed anchor clip, once again. After a bit of hyper ventilating and ignoring mick’s beta to use a sketchy sloper and high step, I reached over felt a huge two hand jug, which I had over looked whilst freaking out 5 minutes earlier, and hauled my ass up and over the lip. What an amazing feeling to get up my first 6b lead!
Mick’s hardest lead was at Duncan’s Boot on Never Mind (6c) which he hopped on thinking it was a 6b. He got to the top without too much trouble in the 2 cruxes. Once we learned what the grade actually was, he was stoked and enjoyed a wonderful boost of confidence, while I dreaded seconding what to me sounded quite hard. I think another break through moment for Mick was when he top-roped The Lion King (6c+) with hardly any trouble. This climb is one of the most traveled climbs as it is on the picturesque Tonsai Beach. We came across it when 2 friends were working it on top rope and offered Mick and I to try. Mick hopped on and with the wonderful confidence of TR went for all the bold moves. After he figured out the crux he climbed through and threw in a knee bar to rest before heading up a tricky flake.
Multipitches
Mick and I climbed 2 multi-pitches in Monkey World. The first aptly named The Beauty and The Beast (6a+, 6a+, 6b) was a 3 pitch climb with a sharp and gnarly first pitch and a gorgeous pumpy overhanging last pitch. Just before we reached the third pitch dark storm clouds rolled in over the back cliffs and I was worried we were going to end up in a storm while belaying Mick up. We stood at the bottom of the third pitch for about 10 minutes debating, and then decided to head on up. About 10 minutes later the thunder clouds were gone and the sunshine came back out. We would have felt pretty silly had we come back down. The last pitch was pretty hard for a 6b and we were both exhausted by the time we got up.
The Wave (6a+, 6b, 6b, 6b) was one of the highlights of our trip to Tonsai. The first pitch is the same as for The Beauty and The Beast, but the following 3 pitches are sustained and gorgeous with ever improving rock. All 3 belays were hanging belays with wonderful views of Railay West and the surrounding islands. This climb was exhilarating and we were both quite happy we headed up it. We were first reluctant to try it as by this point we had only lead a couple of 6b’s, but decided to anyway. Mick was pretty surprised with how easily he lead up his 2 pitches (2 and 4) and came to the wonderful realization (with some coaxing) that our climbing was improving!
Deep Water Soloing
You can’t go to Thailand without going deep water soloing. We hired a longboat with 4 new friends and headed out for a morning of deepwater soloing (and/or climbing onto rocks and jumping into the water with breaks of snorkeling and floating around). The outfit that runs DWS charges $30 a head for the trip, but since we hired our own longboat we only paid $10 each (win!). We also arrived at the first site 30 mins before the DWS boat so we enjoyed crowd free rock. Then we headed out to a few more cliffs. There are few established DWS problems, but we mostly just got on the rock wherever we could, climbed until we got scared and then jumped on into the water. It was fun, but doesn’t really live up to the hype unless you have balls of steel and are willing to climb up 40m. I on the other hand found 2m plenty high and was happy to float around and snorkel after scaring myself silly a few times. The guys climbed up stupidly high and then whimpered like a cat stuck in a tree when they looked down and thought about what they had gotten themselves into. This was invariably followed by coaxing them to jump which is much more fun to watch than to do!
We are both leaving Tonsai with tired muscles and wonderful climbing memories. After having become quite soft around the edges in Indonesia from eating all day, we both feel much fitter (in the right light we even have visible abs!) and are psyched to climb in Chiang Mai, Laos and Cat Ba. We might even return to southern Thailand at the end of our trip as there’s still lots to see and do.
... also if you hadn't noticed I didn't end up flying home, but opted to continue traveling instead! We'll be home March 16.
~Rolls
I think we were on Big Weave (and climbed last pitch under the roof when it rained) when you were on Beauty and The Beast. Fantastic climbs! Cheers...
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