Railay Beach: 21h Kletter-Intensivkurs – Meistere die Felsen!

There are a ton of climbing shops in the area so fear not, you could show up and hire a guide or rent gear. In our case, with only two days of climbing, we wanted to book in advance and the Real rocks team were helpful and communicative before we even arrived in Thailand. They were more expensive than many of the other options I researched, but between the communication and approach, I felt they would be safer (eg regularly replaced gear and solid approach to belaying) so I went with them. Sure enough, our guide was fantastic. If you want a strong communicator, accommodating guide and super safe belayer, I’d highly recommend Pon. We climbed with him for two days and he was awesome. We brought our own shoes and harness but he provided the helmets, quickdraws and rope, all which were in good condition. My only negative for this experience was it was like climbing as a first time activity (which may be fine if you are not a regular rock climber and trying this for the first time). We really just wanted someone to show us the best routes, setup top ropes on things we couldn’t lead on our own, and provide a safe belay. On day 1, we spent a bunch of time to get to the shop and then wait around for the beginners to try on gear and get explanations despite us booking private. We would have preferred to fill out a waiver online and just meet in Railay to get climbing asap rather than losing more than an hour that morning. We also had to accommodate a one hour lunch break which was just their schedule breaking out the climbing day. It eats up time and takes away from climbing where we would have preferred to lunch between climbs. We managed to coordinate directly with Pon on the second day and meet him at Railay beach and start a bit earlier to avoid that process. We also asked him that we take a quick lunch break (we brought our lunch and ate between climbs) and just end the day early, which he was fine with. We also didn’t use the transport they provided as it also was out of the way / added extra time to go to and from the shop rather than just pay for a long tail boat to ao Nang beach (where we stayed).