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Best and Worst of 2011 22-Dec-2011 At 11:08:10 PM Olbert

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On 22/12/2011 linze wrote:
>On 22/12/2011 Olbert wrote:
>
>>
>>Are you kidding me?! I loved Tonsai! The food was like a $1.60 for
>a
>>Penang/Green Curry/Tom Yum/Pad Thai/Pretty much any main. The people
>there
>>were awesome...except for the occasional obnoxious Australian. The locals
>>were super friendly. The climbing was different to anything I ever climbed
>>before, and was pretty awesome in its own way despite the oppressive
>heat
>>and humidity.
>
>i knew someone would go into bat for tonsai....
>Tinas was good pre tsunami. i think Bob (the one constant in Tonsai it
>seems) nailed it when he said to me that the curries had been so watered
>down in Tonsai that it was more like a soup... Bob reckons he is never
>going there again after this year which i reckon tells a story....
>
>add that to piles or rubbish, flies, broken asbestos sheeting and tiles
>everywhere, and wanna be alternative types that have bang on about the
>spritual awakenings that they have experienced on thier travels, and i
>just dont really get the appeal of the place...

Did you go to the same place I did? I went in shoulder season, not high season, so it wasn't super crowded - maybe they cook a bit better when there isn't so many customers. The places I ate at didn't taste like they watered everything down...at all. I spent most of my time in Thailand there and ate at numerous places on Tonsai and they all seemed to be pretty good - except for the green curry most of the dishes weren't swimming in sauce and it certainly didn't taste watered down to me.

I'll give you there were piles of rubbish here about but it wasn't everywhere and wasn't enough to detract from my experience.

I also kinda get the wanna be alternative types being annoying but there weren't too many of those.

>>>
>>>real best: price and quality of beer in the frankenjura
>>
>>Lucky the beer was so good in the Frankenjura because I thought the climbing
>>was worse than New Nowra (and I agree with ODH on that particular subject).
>
>WHAAAAT!!! i dont belive that anyone that actually likes the movement
>of climbing could place thailand above the frankenjura! frankenjura is
>packed with fiesty routes that fight you all the way and require engagement
>of pratically every muscule in your body... thailand - you basically move
>your feet a bit, backstep a couple of times and youré at the top... if
>you like having your ego rubbed thailand is tops, but the routes are as
>lacking in spice as the curries at tonsai....

Are you kidding?! Really?!
I only climbing maybe, 5 or so days in Thailand, but there was one route which I thought was on the soft side of the grade. I had just spent four months climbing in Europe and I can definitely say some of the areas I went to in Spain and France were much softer on the grades. I fell of two 6b+ routes in Thailand and breezed them in Europe.

The climbing was also really interesting! I have never seen tufa and stalactite formations like that anywhere! Where else in the world have you climbed where you have to stop climbing up an increasingly blank wall, turn around and jump out to a massive stalactite?! And it was on a multipitch! I was doing more funky moves in Thailand than anywhere else!

The Frankenjura on the other hand was really really short and poxy. The climbs consisted mainly of painful pockets or tendon destroying crimps with that were over four moves from where you started. It would be a bit better if you like that sort of climbing - I don't. I much preferred 40 metre pumpers at Rodella.