Railay Bay & Vow Renewal

Railay Bay was surreal. It was a remote, small peninsula that's part of the Krabi Province. It's surrounded by huge limestone cliffs jetting out of the ocean. Our resort, Railay Bay Resort & Spa, had huge cliffs on either side of its stretch of beach. We would definitely recommend this place. We went with a "privacy cottage" so we had our own area with a private patio and a small pool tub (like a hot tub, but with cold water). We were very pleased with the resort and everything was extremely affordable. In general, we found that once we got to Thailand most of the prices were really reasonable (I mean, hello, a $7 hour-long massage)!  

We were on the west side of the peninsula, but could easily walk to the east side. The west side has the beautiful sunsets and the prettier beach. The sunsets each night were amazing. I'm not sure that we've ever seen anything that beautiful in our lives! The east side isn't near as nice, and the tide goes out pretty far, so it's left with muddy, ugly beaches for part of the day. There was a stretch of restaurants and shops along the "walking street", one of the ways to get from the west to the east side. There was a restaurant at our resort and we ate there a decent amount, but there wasn't a shortage of other food options. There were several other resorts on Railay Bay with restaurants as well, including Rayavadee, which was extremely nice (and expensive). We ate dinner there on our last night and it was amazing. Great views and fantastic food.

We were in Railay for five days, so we had a great time relaxing and mixing in a little adventure. We booked a trip through ChokPaiSan Andaman Speedboat for a daylong speed boat / snorkeling trip.We were able to book the trip through our resort, and we got picked up and dropped off at our resort; it was extremely convenient. On the trip we went to several of the Phi Phi Islands, including Maya Bay where the movie "The Beach" was filmed. We also went to Bamboo Island which was beautiful, and went snorkeling in a couple of spots. It was a nice mixture of a snorkeling, relaxing, and time on the boat.

I also took advantage of a Thai beach massage which was awesome. I've always wanted to have a massage on the beach, so it was a perfect spot to cross that off my list! Again, it was super cheap - probably the equivalent of $7.

There were also a lot of places to explore near our resort, including a great viewpoint area that was accessible via a somewhat of a difficult hike / climb. The view was well worth it. There were tons of monkeys around our resort, too who were very friendly! Phra Nang Bay, which is known to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, was also just a short, easy 15 minute walk from our resort. This was where we renewed our wedding vows. 

Since it was our fifth wedding anniversary and we were going to be in Thailand, we decided it would be a great time to renew our vows. We also don't love our wedding photos because they were taken inside my home church which was very dark. We're beach people, so we love outdoor, bright scenery and photos. Since we were going to be renewing our wedding vows, we hired a local photographer who we found online to document the occasion and take some professional photos of us. We're so glad to we did - we love the photos he took and it was very special to renew our vows. We wrote custom vows for year #5, and read the original vows we said at our wedding. It was very informal and quick, but still special and memorable.

There were certainly a few bumps in the road, but overall we had an amazing trip. It was so interesting to be able to see a new continent and witness a culture that's completely different than ours. We're so glad we went. Our favorite spot was Railay and while we're typically against returning to the same spot more than once, we've already said it would be great to make it back at some point. We'd also love to just do a beach hopping trip around Thailand since it has so many beautiful beaches. I'm sure we could have been happy doing that on this trip, but I think we would have been remiss if we didn't take the time to see Bangkok and some of the other cities on the mainland. I'm curious to see where we'll end up next year!