To get some more proper beach time after Tonsai, we decided to go to Koh Yao Noi, an island between (geographically not super accurate) Krabi and Phuket. Before getting there, we planned to stay a night in the super touristy town, Ao Nang, close to Tonsai/Railey beach. The cheapest hostel we could find was Slumber Party Hostel, an accommodation directly in the city, so even though at first we were not in the mood for a party, we decided to stay there due to low price and good location. The hostel had a pre-drinking party with drinking games such as beer pong, there was one hour of serving vodka to hostel guests for free (very bad vodka, but it got us into some party mood xD).

After that, we went to a bar/club in town. All in all, we spent that night as much money as we spent in a week normally, but whatever, at least we had a good party with dancing till 5 AM. We even saved money for tuk-tuk because a nice Egyptian guy drove his friend home and also took us.

Sadly we realized too late that there is no bus going from Ao Nang to the harbor we needed to go, so instead of paying an expensive taxi, we decided to hitchhike (also because we spend so much money on booze the day before). It was around 50 km, so we figured it will not be the biggest problem. It turned out we were right, one guy took us till the main route (waiting time 20min) and at the main road after 5 minutes a couple took as in and drove us directly to the harbor.
On Koh Yao Noi we already booked a bungalow (thank you again booking.com for a good promotion) next to rice fields and water buffaloes.

Koh Yao Noi was not as touristic as other places, but sadly the weather was not so great at the time we were there. Most of the days were cloudy and one day it fully rained. We still managed to chill at the beach and go around the island with the scooter we rented for the whole stay. Once we even did a classic island hopping, which was nice.

After Koh Yao Noi we planned to go to Bangkok, but due to the Coronavirus situation and the fact that there have been two terroristic attacks there (nothing with the bombing, but people got stabbed and shot randomly on the street), we decided to skip the capital city and go directly to Chiang Mai. Chang Mai was also the first place we had the chance to do a Workaway.

Workaway is a platform that allows members to arrange homestays and cultural exchange. Volunteers or “Workawayers”, are expected to contribute a pre-agreed amount of time per day in exchange for lodging and food, which is provided by their host.

wiki

We arrived there Saturday night, which was great because the weekend is off at this Workaway, so on Sunday, we went to Chiang Mai’s old town to explore a lot of different temples and the Sunday Walking Market. The Sunday walking market is a huge street market with food and all kind of souvenirs, sunglasses, and unneeded stuff.

This particular Workaway was an Online-English teaching school, so we were teaching English via Skype. We had a maximum of 5 lessons a day which each had 40 minutes, but we had only 2 days 4 lessons and the rest 3. Additionally, we had 3 meals a day, so we did not spend anything on food and accommodation. So from Monday till Friday we just recharged our travel batteries by chilling with the other travelers, watching movies, reading and some teaching in the evening. The teaching plan was a little bit chaotic, so every day around 4-5 pm we good a plan which students we will have that day. Afterward, we were checking the individual student report to see what is the students level and what he did in his last lesson, with that information we planned the upcoming lecture. With the older students which already spoke good English lessons could be very interesting because we talked a lot about daily life in Thailand but with younger kids (Magda hat an 8-year-old) it was very difficult and we played a lot of games. All in all, it is good that there is an option to improve your English from home online, but it could be organized better for the students.

Saturday morning after breakfast we left the teaching school to stay one more night in Chiang Mai. For Saturday we rented a scooter and visited two temples outside of Chiang Mai and in particular Wat Phra That Doi Suthep turned out to be very beautiful. In the night we met with Kola, our colleague from Taiwan exchange. She took us to a Thai hot pot place, a place we would have never gone without her and it was so good perfect last evening.

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Our next stop after Kuala Lumpur was Tonsai beach in Thailand, one of the biggest climbing spots in SE Asia. To get there, we had to take an overnight bus (20 euro for 2 people) from Kuala Lumpur to Hat Yai (Thailand), a 5h minibus ride (400BHT /person) to Ao Nam Mao harbor and a short longboat ride (100BH /person) to Railey beach.
The climbing area is on both beaches, Tonsai and Railey, and depending on the tide you can just walk to Tonsai beach (15min). We arrived when the sun was already down,
so finding the path to Tonsai was a bit tricky. It is just a small path through the woods, and if you do not know where it starts, it is hard to spot. Luckily a few people came from the other side, so we had a confirmation that it is the way we are looking for.
We did not book any room upfront, so the plan was to check various places and take the one we like. We ended up staying in Green Valley Resort, not an actual resort, but OK. We planned to stay there for 2 weeks, so we got a good deal (450 BHT /night). We also checked some cheaper places, the lowest offer was 250BHT (~7euro), but we did not want to stay for 2 weeks in those places.
Sadly, Magda was sick for the first two days, so I (Mattias) had to find somebody to go climbing with, which is super easy in Tonsai. In the end, you will end up finding too many people to climb with(especially when you are the one with the rope ;)).

Tipps and Tricks

Accomendation:

If there is no super promotion on Booking/ Agoda the best way is to just go there and check rooms or bungalows. Also if you stay longer most of the places are offering discounts and it is always possible to discuss prices a bit. The rooms/bungalows start with 250BHT and go up to 3000 BHT resort places (or even more).

Restaurants:

There are a lot of restaurants around Tonsai and because it is cut off from the mainland you are forced to eat there.

For breakfast, we can recommend Green Valley, which has the best pancakes in Tonsai, and Legacy (but bring mosquito spray). Food prices normally start around 80 BHT, which is nearly double the price if you compare it with other places in Thailand (from our experience).

For dinner, we recommend:

•  Ting Tong on the Tonsai beachfront, which has really good Currys, 
• Mama Chicken 
• Thai Family on Railey beach,
• Green Valley

Top 3 crags:

1. Eagle wall (access via boat, 200 BHT for the boat ride)
2. Wee wall
3. Duncans boat / 123 Wall / Muay Thai (they are close to each other, just 123 Wall is partly used by guides)

Top 3 routes:

1. 6b+ Alta Ruta on Eagle Wall
2. 6a Ramazona on 123 Wall
3. 6a+ Dr. Jekull & Mrs. Hyde on 123 Wall 

At the end of the day

If somebody would ask us if he/she should go to Tonsai to experience amazing climbing and great vibe, we would say NO! There are way better climbing spots to visit in Europe, for example in Greece. If your are traveling around the area anyway, you should go there and try for your self. Of course, not everything is bad, but if you plan to go there for your holidays just for climbing, we would recommend going somewhere else.
For us, the whole vibe and the weird mix of climbers, travelers and resort guests just felt unpleasant. If we had to put it in the form of a list it would look like:

Cons:

• Very crowed, not only climbers, also people from resorts or day trips
• Mosquitoes (which might give you dengue fever)!!!
• No real shop to buy food or fruits or anything
• Expensive (compared to other places in Thailand)
• Tides, not only check if the crag is for AM or PM climbing also check if it is depending on the tide. Some crags you can only go on low tide or you have to take a boat (not cheap)
• Polished rocks

Pros:

• Beaches and the sea 
• Interesting 3D-tufa climbing
• Very easy to find climbing partners

We know, this post feels quite negative, BUT we still do not regret our stay there and we would like to thank Stefan, Michael, Lorenz, and Lena to make this stay memorable. See you guys in another climbing spot another time 🙂

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The night before the hike we stayed in a nice guesthouse called “The 1000 Hills”. We had a standard room with a nice garden view. Later that evening we realized that we also had a roommate, a small gecko that lived behind the bed. But for this night he had to move out 🙂

The next day after breakfast, we set out to the jungle with our guide, Jamaica, at least he claimed that was his second name and after telling us that we (to be honest) forget his first name. Jamaica was anyway easier and more fun.

[1] The Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii) is one of the three species of Orangutans and can only be found in the north of the Indonesian island Sumatra. The name Orangutan is based on two separate local words, “orang” (people) and “hutan” (forest). Derived from malay it translates in to “person of the forest”

After a 30 minutes walk along the road, we finally stepped into the jungle. The plan was to spot Orangutans[1] while walking to our camp for the night. To be fair, it is not a real trek/hike it is more like moving 20-30 meters in a direction and then watch the trees again to spot the monkeys, therefore it is not tiring but all the standing around makes you an easy target for leeches[2] and they are on you most of the time. So do not forget your special leech socks before going into the jungle (good that we got a pair from the guesthouse :)).

[2] A leech is a kind of worm that feeds by sucking blood from other animals or humans.

Sadly we did not see any Orangutan till lunch, but we knew that chances were high to see one in the next 2 and half days. As we arrived for lunch at our camp, food was already being prepared by Jamaica’s uncle, Ismail (or just Is). Is was our cook and camp caretaker for the trip. The camp we stayed in had 2 big camping tents (for 2 groups) made out of transparent plastic folia. There were also two cooking spots. At that time there was also another group of people in the camp having lunch. They stayed the night before in this camp and already saw multiple Orangutans. We were a little bit jealous, but also excited to search around more. Unfortunately,
it was not our day, also after lunch, we did not see anything, only Thomas’s langur[3].

[3] Thomas’s langur or Thomas leaf monkey lives only in the northern part of Sumatra.

The first night in the plastic tent was good, we only had one unwelcome guest, a snake, which turned out to be just a frog but our guide nearly jumped out of his sleeping bag without opening it. 🙂
The next day, right before breakfast we finally got lucky! A mother Orangutan with here baby passed the camp. It was amazing, they were swinging just 20 meters away from us from tree to tree, then they went high up the tree behind our camp, and they stayed there for easily an hour or more to let their fur dry out from last night rain.

To get some better pictures I (Mattias) tried to follow them, of course, just in flip flops. So on the way back, I slipt on some wet rocks and fell on my ass. It was sooooo painful! I even had to take painkillers to sleep (fortunately after a few weeks, it was good again).
When will I learn?! 🙂

After breakfast and a swim in the river to cool my ass, we started another hike to see more Orangutans. This time it did not take that long. We even saw one big male, which was making lots of noise. Jamaica already saw him on trips before and named him King Louie. He was with another smaller female, but she swang away the minute we arrived. Until lunch, we followed Louie around. It was funny because it looked like he was watching us the same way, as we were watching him. For us, the goal of seeing an Orangutan was already fulfilled, so after lunch, we decided to go for some natural hot springs. It was an easy hike, around 30 minutes along the river.
The hot thermal water was mixing with the cold river water, so you could decide your temperature (depending on where you sit). It was amazing! For the rest of the day, we relaxed in the hot water. In the evening we played games and we talked with our two guides.
We exchanged information about daily life routines in Europe and Indonesia. Jamaica also told us, that he wants to propose to his girlfriend, so he has to save a lot of money, not to buy a ring as we thought (well, that also), but We were also to buy out his future wife from her family. The parents and the family set the price. We asked what is the reason for different buyout prices for girls (cos there is). We thought maybe it has something to do with their beauty or family status. None of those. The girl is the most precious when she has… well-paid job! 😀

On the last day, we felt a bit lazy cos we already saw 4 Orangutans, but we still went out for a short hike to another area. We did not see anything, but for us, the trip already paid off. So after lunch the four of us started to walk out of the jungle. On this walk-out, we saw 5 more Orangutans!! One mama with here baby we met directly at the street and they crossed the street above our heads (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUcf7-1LiVk).

This trek is worth our highest recommendation. Not only will you have the chance to explore the deep jungle with a guide, who seems to know it by heart, but you will also have a chance to eat local food, cooked freshly by the river, spend lots of time with local people and get to know their habits and points of view to today’s world. And that’s what is truly interesting while traveling.

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After staying no longer than two nights in all the previous places we visited, finally, we were heading to a destination where we were about to stay for 5 days – lake Toba.
Our initial plan was to stay in Bukittinggi for one night and hike up to a volcano (name to put in), but the weather forecast was really bad, so we decided to catch the earliest bus to lake Toba.
The bus ride was around 16h (from 1:30 PM till 4:30 AM), we arrived early morning in Parapat city, from where we took a boat to Samosir island (funny fact, we met our captain in breakfast place, his name, as he claimed was Nelson Mandela 🙂 ).
Our guesthouse (Sibayak Guesthouse 120 000 IDR/day for 2 ppl) was shot walking distance from the port, in the small, backpacker village called Tuk Tuk. The guesthouse is directly at the lake, so the first thing we did was a short swim in its clean waters.

Lake Toba is the biggest sweet water lake in whole Southeast Asia, it has 1145 square km, and a depth of 450 meters. It is also a place, where the first inhabitants of Sumatra lived – the Bataks’.

Batak people are still living in Danau Toba surrounding. Mostly Protestant Christian, with a mixture of their ancient rituals and beliefs. One of the most known rites is how they bury their people. The tombs are miniatures of their houses with a small cross on it, so if you will see a cute little house on the side of the road, beware that it is a grave. What’s more, after 15 years they are digging up the remains of the bodies of their loved ones, to clean and polish the bones and bury them again. After we heard that, we decided to go to Bataks’ village to find out more about them. One of the most memorable information was that they were cannibals and they were eating their enemies and wrongdoers, spiced with garlic and chili – but no one can confirm that :P.

We still had a lack of hiking, so we decided to rent a scooter (80 000 IDR/day) and we drove to the base of the mountain Pusuk Buhit. It supposed to be a nice hike, with a stunning view over the lake, unfortunately, the hike wasn’t as pleasant as we expected it. We were alone throughout the whole way up, the path was full of two meters high bushes. We also took two phones out of battery and no cable for fully charged power bank :). Fortunately, we managed to do at least a few photos, which you can find below.
Next few days of our stay we took easy and just chilled around the island. We did some laundry, sorted out photos and wrote our first blog entry. 🙂
While spending quite a lot of time around our guesthouse, we met a guide from Ketambe (our upcoming destination).
His name was Harry and we managed to get a quite good deal for an Orangutan Jungle Trek -3 days, two nights in the jungle + one additional night before the trek in a guesthouse near to the starting point of the hike. For everything, we paid 82 euros/person (regular price on the market is 100 euros/person, without the night before in the guesthouse).

The day after we left at 7 AM, together with our guide Harry. We traveled for 10 hours in 1 minibus and 3 labi-labi’s (200 000 IDR /person) to reach Ketambe.

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We almost got lucky by catching a labi-labi directly to Pariaman by chasing it on the scooter, but sadly it was full. Therefore we had to take two buses, one from Harau valley to Bukittinggi and one further to Pariaman. Fortunately, we only had to wait 30 minutes for our second bus. This gave us some time to check online for some accommodation for two days. We got lucky and found a really good offer on Booking.com (260 000 IDR for two nights)… at least that’s what we thought.
The name of the place was Hotel Shafira, which confirmed our booking right away. The way from a bus station to the hotel was a bit of a hassle. No service was available, no bus, nor Grab, so we had to agree on an expensive scooter taxi (same price as the bus we took for 130 km distance). Finally, we arrived, we checked in, paid a deposit and went to leave our luggage in our room. What we found there was disappointing. The room was not cleaned after previous guests, the bedsheets were dirty, the same with the bathroom, so we kindly asked for new sheets. Unfortunately, the second sheets were also dirty, so we asked for a fresh one again. We gave up after receiving dirty ones for the third time. We decided to keep the sheets we’ve got and we went for dinner.

After we got back, the receptionist called us to the lobby and asked us to show him our marriage license, since we were staying in one room.
We said, that we don’t have one, so we have been told to leave the hotel as soon as possible. It was 10:30 PM, as we mentioned before, no services available, so we would have to walk to the next hotel. We asked receptionists to help us to contact any other hotels nearby to ask for a room for us. One place didn’t pick up the phone and the other was way above our budget (400 000 IDR per night). Finally, they let us stay, but in two separate rooms and only for one night, so the next day in the morning we went for some “room hunting”. Few places asked us also for a marriage license, but we managed to find one lovely guesthouse (HCP guesthouse) on the same street as Shafira hotel.
It wasn’t the cheapest (250 000 IDR), but we wanted this accommodation problem
to be dealt with, so we could enjoy the rest of our stay without worrying about it.

Relieved to have a room for the night, we were ready to relax again. The plan for the day was to visit the small island close to Pariaman called Pulau Angso Duo. To get there we got a round trip boat ticket (100 000 IDR for two people) at the harbor. There is no schedule of this boats, basically if there is more then 10 people, they will go, but we made the deal with captain, that we will leave right away and that he will pick us up at fixed time, 4 PM. He agreed, although it cost us 20 000 IDR more (so normally per person you should pay 40 000 IDR).
Pulau Angso Duo is a lovely tiny island with a nice white sand beach. To make it hippier (or instagrammable^^) there were a lot of photoshoot accessories like swings and little houses (you can see them in the gallery).

Sadly, just 30 minutes after arriving we had another unpleasant encounter. Some guy came up to me and told me that Magda has to dress up more. We both have been quite upset because we were alone at the beach, nobody was there and wearing long clothes at 32°C is REALLY uncomfortable. Even though we fully respect that Indonesia has different rules and traditions, it felt not correct for us at this moment. So after this, our moods dropped and we both were happy to leave Pariman the next morning.
At 4.30 PM we returned to the city, we still needed to figure out how to get back to Bukittinggi. After some asking around at the place we thought is the bus station,
one girl and one guy with his kid drove us on their scooters to the actual bus station and told us when the bus will leave the next day. We would have never found the bus station because it is just a street corner with no sign or anything, so we were happy that we met such friendly people, keen to help us.

In the night we have been very tired so we ended up getting some street food and eat it in bed with some new Modern Family episode. Shortly after we finished the meal it knocked on the door, oh no, we already had a bad feeling that they also want to ask for marriage certificate :P, but there was no need to worry. The owner of the guesthouse brought us dinner. We were super surprised about that, we did not know it was included in the price of the room. Even though we both were full we still ate a bit of the it. Meal was delicious and not to waste it, since we had no more capacity, we decided to pack it for breakfast. In the morning it turned out that breakfast was also included in the price and that our host woke up earlier to prepare it for us, since we told him we have to leave around 6 AM. That was really great.
After a short photo-shoot with the whole family of our host (as usually^^), we left for the bus. The guy from the day before, who showed us where the bus stop is, even came to check on us, if we managed to get there again. This good and all the help we received the last few hours of our stay in Pariaman was helping us forget other unpleasant moments we experienced there. So it is good not to base your opinions about places,
on single situations (like we did at the beginning), because it can ruin your mood and can lead to misjudgment.

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