Ao Nang Tower is a multi-pitch route I wanted to climb today, but arrived too late last night to fix up a partner in Tonsai. As we sliced past it on the longtail boat this morning, a team were in situ on the first pitch; looked awesome.

Tonsai village was visibly enlarged compared with last year, and rumour has it that an access road and a big resort development are on the cards next year. This will ruin it, which is a shame as it's one of only a handful of places in the world where you can just show up, stay around for any amount of time from days to months on a low budget, and find people to climb with on hundreds of routes that are all within walking distance.

Still good coffee at Wee's though ('Welcome, welcome, don't be shy, wake up wake up, coffee coffee, museli breakfast, guete Morgen'). Bumped into an old acquaintance from Leeds who I climbed on Dow Crag with in about 1993, and some of last year's familiar faces at Dum's Kitchen (which is in fact a crag, not food preparation area), and bouldered on it with some hardcore dude and ripped my fingers to shreds in about 30 minutes. One weird thing about limestone sea cliffs is that the sharpest rock is always in the tidal zone, where you'd expect it to be washed smooth. A result of this manifest paradox was that I soon pressed on to Railay, arriving in time to jump on the 2.00 pm snorkelling trip out to the islands.

It was a stormy afternoon and the rain fell in strange analogies (stair rods, cats and dogs, wellingtons), but the visibility was OK and I found a big chest of gold doubloons, wrestled for my life with a giant squid, and hitched a ride on the tail fin of a blue whale.

OK, I lied. But I did see a black tip reef shark, and it was massive. Honest.