Adventure Race-ing It

When the alarm went off at the un-Godly early hour of 6am on Monday, Jen and I both groaned and then dragged ourselves out of bed. We hadn't been able to book our flight to Bangkok ahead of time (apparently the airlines are closed on the weekends?!) so we were planning on getting to the airport around 9am to finagle our way into a flight later that morning.

We had been warned about Monday morning traffic in HCMC and it's no joke. It took nearly two hours to go the 7km from center city to the international terminal. Along the way we passed a parade in honor of Uncle Ho's 118th birthday. Because, why wouldn't you hold that on a Monday morning at 8am?

We arrived at the airport and went to the ticketing counter. We asked the woman if there were any flights available to Bangkok. She asked, increduously, "today?" Um, yes please. We soon had our one-way tickets in hand and were checking our baggage. (Which seemed to have gained a couple kilos unbeknownst to us...)

After making it through immigration and security, we passed two wankers, one wearing an iPood t-shirt, with a picture of a man sitting on a toilet, and the other wearing a FedSex t-shirt... seriously, what were they thinking?! We killed the time until our flight buy ordering over-priced drinks at the Illy cafe and perusing the duty free shops, where water was more expensive than LAX.

The short flight on Vietnam Airlines (have I told you how much I love their hand wipes? They smell SO good!) was uneventful and we soon landed at Bangkok. We went through immigration, yet again, collected our bags and hiked the three flights up to domestic departures, to book our flights to Krabi. After getting the run-around by a travel agent, we decided to go directly to the AirAsia counter and book there. Right as we were about to pay, their computer system crashed. So we sat in front of the counter for over an hour while they tried to get back online.



Luckily, they pulled it off, we booked our tickets, checked our baggage, walked to our boarding gate and bum-rushed the airplane (apparently, AirAsia is a free-for-all seating arrangement, a la Southwest). This flight was also short and sweet and we soon found ourselves at Krabi Internation airport. After collecting our packs (I swear they get heavier each time) we hopped a shuttle to the Ao Nang pier, got an (expensive) long-tail boat ride to Rai Lay (it's only accessible by boat) and found a hotel for the evening.



The next day, we awoke to the sounds of construction outside our door. The sounds stopped for awhile after Jen went out and spoke to the workmen, but we decided to find a new hotel after breakfast. When that was all sorted out, we rented some climbing gear and set off for Diamond Cave. As soon as we got there, it started to rain, so we sought refuge in the bar situated next to the crag (I could really get used to that kind of layout...) and waited it out. Soon the sky cleared and I was on my first lead in quite some time. We stuck with some of the easier climbs (rated 5s on the French scale) and had a wonderful time.

(The view from the top.)

Of course, even when you're not in LA, you're still in LA, and the couple climbing nearest us was comprised of some guy named Luke and Peta "La Femme Nikita" Wilson. Random.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing around the pool and enjoying our swank digs: