Phranang Peninsula, Krabi 2008 – Misc

To end my entry on my trip to Phranang Peninsula, I’ve decided to post some of my favourite photos taken from Anna-Rina (check out her new blog!), Cris and Edmund’s photo albums. Due to this trip, we’ve decided to focus on outdoor climbing a little bit more and we’re planning to buy a 70metres rope soon!

Phranang Peninsula, Krabi 2008 – Food

Food is probably one of the other best things of Krabi. My personal favourites would be the roasted chicken, banana pancake, fresh mango and pineapple.

I had roasted chicken for 3 days consecutively until I fell sick on the 4th day. I had sore throat and fever. I think I ate too much roasted chicken.

Coconut milkshake – drink in moderation otherwise you’ll get diarrhea

2 of my friends had food poisoning from the food they ate. I was fortunate to escape that but when I came back to Kuala Lumpur, I had food poisoning after consuming local Wat Tan Hor. Tunasing!!

We had seafood almost every night. In every restaurant in Tonsai, they have a section for customers to choose seafood of their choice to be barbequed. Red snapper is not bad.

After a long day of climbing, we would consume couple of bottles of Chang beer at 50 Bath per bottle.


Pineapple fried rice is one of our favourite dishes as well. It comes in a real pineapple!

The prices are relatively cheap – depending on the location. Food in Tonsai was very cheap but food in East and West Railey was pretty expensive – almost equivalent to prices of food in shopping centres in the Klang Valley.


Pad Thai – West Railey serves good Pad Thai


Western food is quite common here
Further, food is abundant in the Phranang Penisula. You’ll never go hungry cause there are plenty of places to eat. One of our favourites would be a shop located nearby the beach. They sell fresh mango, mango sticky rice, roasted chicken and so on.


My favourite stall comes with a Doraemon baloon


Stall at Phranang @ Phranang Beach


Boat selling food @ Phranang Beach


The stuff on the right was sweet and spicy!


Drinks stall @ Tonsai – They even sell hard liquor. No ID required!


Mango sticky rice

One of the ladies selling Mango sticky rice tried to pick up one of my friends.
Lady: Are you single??
Friend: Er..
Lady: if you are, come meet me at Chill Out Bar tonight!

On that night, my friend avoided Chill Out Bar at all cost.

Phranang Peninsula, Krabi 2008 – Climbing – Part II

Other than Dum’s Kitchen, we climbed the following walls too.

Tyrolean Wall

This was one of the walls I climbed when I was sick. Nothing to shout about save for a great view of Tonsai Beach from the top!


Sun block overdose…

Thaiwand Wall
To reach Thaiwand Wall, we had to take a 15 minutes hike up a hill which is located at the end of West Railey beach.

The climbs were quite enjoyable and the view was spectacular. Anna climbed up one of the routes and anchored herself up with her camera. She took loads of great shots from up there!

I was told that some acquaintances saw the waves striking West Railey during the Tsunami tragedy from Thaiwand Wall. They were fortunate to be up there during that time.
But the drawback of Thaiwand Wall is that it was too sandy and dusty. Our gears were literally covered with sand when we left.

Muay Thai Wall

Muay Thai Wall is located at East Railey. I kinda dislike East Railey cause of the flies. We had breakfast around that area before our climb and we had flies everywhere!! The flies were trying to invade our food!

And while climbing at the beachside, we had flies perching on us! NIAMAH!!

We moved into the forest to escape the flies. Fortunately, there were no flies in the forest. They have 2 easy 6A and 6B routes. The 6B route was a little bit tricky as some of us swung out from the rocks. Steve and I both hit a tree. Thank god I didn’t fracture my tailbone.

There is another 6 grade route. However, when Ping tried climbing the route, he had to come down cause he realised it didn’t have an anchor!


Got place to meditate too!

Defile Wall

Defile Wall is located at Phranang Beach. The area has couple of nice rock formation.

One of the surfaces of the walls
Defile Wall houses a nice 25 meter 6A+ route called Mai Pen Rai. The first three bolts are pretty tough and handholds are mostly sharp crimps.

The rest of the route consists of jugs. By the time I reach the last few bolts, my mind kept thinking… “What if my harness breaks now? What if I slip and fall all the way down?? What if whattt ifff wtfff!!!”.

Here we climbed with one Canadian by the name Dan. He is one of those many travellers who come to Krabi alone and find their climbing mates here.

It was getting dark and Dan was eager to climb thee Mai Pen Rai route before leaving. He grabbed his headgear light and scaled up the wall. It was almost completely dark. All we could see was a dot of light up on the wall!

Phranang Peninsula, Krabi 2008 – Climbing – Part I

5 days of climbing took a severe beating on our physical health. We suffered hundred of bruises, cuts, rope burns and aching muscles. Not to mention, flu, fever, cough, sore throat and food poisoning – although might not be caused by climbing.


Steve’s fingers


Ping’s fingers


Ping’s knee


My thigh – rope burn


Anna-Rina‘s siew kai bei.

The popular walls were mostly crowded. We had, from time to time, people coming up to us asking us to bugger off so that they can climb the route. But this time round, we managed to climb some routes that we climbed on the last time and also new walls. We also had to line up until sunset to wait for certain route. It was like waiting in line for a Disneyland ride. NIAMAH!!

Notwithstanding the torturous bits, it strengthened me mentally. It strengthens my belief that everything is possible with commitment, confidence and determination. Leading up a 25 metres route made me believe that we can achieve anything with such principles.

Immediately after we dropped our bags at our hotel, we had lunch and headed straight to Dum’s Kitchen to climb. Dum’s Kitchen is one of the most popular walls. It houses a 6A, 6B, 6C and a 6C+ wall.


Ping praying to God of Climber before climbing


Some of the routes were climbed so frequently until some of its handholds have turned smooth. Kena molested 9 9.


Dum’s Kitchen is also a great spot to take pictures of sunset as it faces the sea.


Around Dum’s Kitchen. Water rises in the afternoon.

To be continued..

Phranang Peninsula, Krabi 2008 – Overview

The Phranang Peninsula is a well known rock climbing spot in Thailand. It consists of, among others, Tonsai, East and West Railey, Phranang Beach. Due to its geographical location, Phranang Peninsula is only accessible by boat. In 2004, I was here and it left me great memories. I didn’t think twice of coming back to climb again.

Unfortunately, the Phranang Peninsula in 2004 is not the same with the Phranang Peninsula now. It has become crowded and more commercialised. You even have to line up to set up routes to climb.

The sea water doesn’t look clean and flies were everywhere. Speaking about flies, flies and sand flies were the biggest turnoff in this trip. I came back scratching my sandfly bites crazy for few days.

After 6 days of continuous climbing and eating, we (consisting of 11 people divided into Team Malaysia and Team Australia) came home with hundreds of bruises, rope burns, food poisoning, fever and flu. Team Australia consists of friends who work in Australia but came back to Malaysia to join Team Malaysia to Krabi.

My trip was marred on the 4th day when I fell sick. My sore throat was so bad that I couldn’t swallow my saliva. I stayed in bed until afternoon after taking some medication.

In the evening, I followed the rest to Tyrone Wall to climb. After climbing one route, I went back to the hotel with a fever. Fortunately, after a few Panadols and loads of burpees, I was fine the next day.

The journey to Krabi was quite a breeze. We took a 1 hour 20 minutes flight from LCCT to Krabi International Airport, 30 minutes van ride to Ao Nang and 10 minutes boat ride to Tonsai. Krabi International Airport is a small but modern airport. Once we stepped out from the departure hall, we had transport operators swarming at us as if we were shit and they were flies. We settled for a van to fit 11 of us to Ao Nang.

One part that caught my attention in Krabi International Airport is their reserved signage. At the departure hall, they have a reserved sign for women and kids which is just right after a reserved sign for monks. Monks get higher priority than women and kids. Wow.

The van that took us to Ao Nang a.k.a the Venga Van had dance music blaring out from its sub woofers and flashing lights to compliment the music. It looked normal from outside but it’s a mini disco inside!

We stayed at Mountain View Resort at Tonsai. It was way better than the one we stayed last time. I shared a fan room with Ping and Edmund. Toilet was quite nice and complete. The toilet of the last hotel I stayed only had a toilet bowl and a pipe.


Tiew Khao Lei!!

Our routine for 5 days was quite simple. We woke up around 7am (electricity gets cut off at 7am every day until evening), climb until afternoon, have lunch, climb again (except for one day where we went kayaking) and then have dinner. Massage wasn’t my top activity for this trip. Probably because my leg hurts big time from rope burn.

We celebrated the New Year along Tonsai beach with a thousand or more guai lous. Wei Chen and Mindy left dinner early to check out the Cobra show but they were disappointed to arrive early as all they could see is a fat guy sweeping the mat couple of times. The cobra came eventually but a few minutes before the fireworks. Once the fireworks shot up, everyone ignored the Cobra.

We also bought some Kung Ming lanterns to play with. We could see hundreds of Kung Ming lanterns floating in the sky. I was told that Kung Ming lanterns are very popular in the Thai culture.

I left for my room early cause I wasn’t feeling well. Further, we had to wake up early to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur.

The journey back home was a breeze as well. Within a few hours, I was back at home – shoving in 6 days worth of dirty laundry into the washing machine.


Ping ala Titanic Style

More details up soon!