Have a Banana

If there’s something I particularly like about Tonsai, in addition to everything else, it’s the fact that there is a cute monkey around every corner. They sit watching from the rafters over breakfast and in the afternoon gather in the bush next to our house to eat the leaves. These are the chillest monkeys you’ve ever seen.

The Dusky leaf monkey’s population is declining due to habitat loss, poaching, and land use, and now it is classified as endangered. Luckily, the woman at the corner shop provides a solid supply of bananas throughout the week.

Tonsai is treating us well, with daily climbing, swimming, and back gammon tournaments. In the evenings, to avoid battalions of mosquitos, we watch a lot of Netflix and have adopted the sleep schedule of toddlers.

Morning commute to climbing. Thaiwand Wall is on the right

We went for an exciting journey right through the middle of the peninsula today, via a huge cave from one side of Thaiwand Wall to the other.

The cave systems is about 100 metres long

We are staying in Tonsai, which can be seen on the other side of the bay

Its a very chilled existence here and we are doing a few routes each day.

We only intended on climbing a few easy routes here, but the perfect limestone is like a red rag to a bull, and we are getting a bit stronger.

Some of the best climbing is in the beach roof area; a row of near-perfect overhanging lines, with grades ranging from pretty hard to extremely hard. The wall is where the climbing glitterati strut about, mincing around on the hard stuff, flexing their huge muscles and omitting the occasional power scream.

Yesterday we braved it out, sweating and grunting our way up the easiest route at the crag, with limited success and some excellent whining. It was some kind of miracle that this morning we turned up and both completed it second go.