I guess the good luck and permanent smiles could not last forever! This week’s Postcard from Paradise is sadly a little more negative than the last few weeks offerings. Perhaps we are difficult and ungrateful, perhaps the excellent places we have seen over the last 3 weeks have set our expectations too high? Either way, if you don’t want to hear about the darker side of travelling, it might be best to skip this and wait until next week. For easy laughs and a good feeling inside, click here instead...
This trip to South East Asia was always going to be more about exploration, but after a few weeks of jungle bashing and bolting, the idea of plentiful convenient cragging, and the chance to try some harder routes started to appeal.
We left Bangkok early one morning on a flight to Krabi, and by 10am were searching out a place to stay on a very crowded and smelly Ton Sai beach. I had spent a few weeks here in 2007 during my first SEA trips, and I was sad to see how rapidly things have changed, and not for the better.
Hectic (usual) scenes at the Ton Sai Roof
Ton Sai was never going to win any hygiene awards, but now things are getting grim, with piles of garbage and raw sewage everywhere - there are just too many people for the area to handle. Terrible stories of contaminated water from neighbouring waste systems, and ugly infections from the dirty sea are common place. It’s such a shame as the views and situation are breathtaking, truly magnificent – another sad case of paradise lost?
To read the rest of the post, along with more pictures, go to JPClimbing.com
No comments:
Post a Comment