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Published: April 25th 2017
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For our last two nights in Thailand we decided to stay in the town of Ao Nang. It's a big busy place with a fast road running through it. Not our style at all but it's close to Krabi airport, and we had an 8am flight. We thought it might be nice to do a day trip to Railay Beach, only accessible by boat due to the imposing landscape surrounding it. We'd been there ten years ago and had so many fond memories of it. Railay is the place you see on all of the brochures and ads for Thailand. It's a land of powdery white sand beaches, long tail boats adorned with colorful flowers and ribbons, and those impossibly steep limestone cliffs which make you reach for your camera every few minutes. Well, as you've probably guessed from the title, it's not the paradise it used to be.
One problem is that Krabi upgraded from a sleepy domestic airport into an international airport. There are now many direct flights arriving from Malaysia and China, and thanks to Air Asia, they're cheap. We took a long tail boat from Ao Nang for the ten minute ride to the
Railay peninsula. There are essentially three beaches: Phranang Cave Beach, which is the famous one and the one we used to lay out on, Railay East, the backpacker beach as it's too much like a mudflat to lay out on and thus had the cheapest accommodation, and Railay West, home of the big resorts but still beautiful. All of the beaches are close together and easy to walk to.
We decided to have the long tail boat drop us off at the famous Phranang Cave Beach, and what a shock we got. It was full, and I mean FULL, of Chinese and Malay tourists running around taking selfies in their bright orange life jackets and carrying plastic bags full of polystyrene containers, which would undoubtedly end up strewn on the beach. Sorry to be so blunt, but we've seen it too many times before. Scott and I looked around in dismay. How could somewhere so perfect become so overrun in just a decade?
We decided to try to walk along the beach towards the famous cave as that was where the pathway to East Railay (the mudflat beach) started. Maybe that would be less
crowded? The problem was that we'd have to navigate the crowds without being stopped every few minutes for people to take photos of the kids. In Ko Lanta, our kids had blended right in with the Swedish families, but since getting to Ao Nang they'd received a lot of attention. They enjoyed it, it has to be said, but this crowd was unsurpassed!
We passed through the gauntlet fairly unscathed and by-passed the famous fertility cave. For one, I'm not planning to have any more babies and don't need the gods deciding otherwise! And secondly, I'm not sure a cave full of wooden penises of all shapes and sizes is exactly appropriate for a two and four year old! ?
The walkway along the cliff base was just like it used to be - nice and shady and with interesting rock formations everywhere. And barely any people (but a troop of monkeys!) This was more like the old days of Railay Beach! Once on the mudflat beach, it again felt very reminiscent of the old days of travel before kids, that is until Jake started to whine incessantly because he needed a drink. We
managed to distract him and keep the whining to a minimum until we thankfully ran into a minimart. After a nice cold chocolate milk carton we were ready to cross the peninsula to check out how the years had treated West Railay. We were pleasantly surprised. While it was undeniably busy for low season, it wasn't the circus that Phranang Cave Beach was. We spent several hours here and had a nice Thai food lunch overlooking the beach. Maybe all isn't lost with Railay after all?
So that's the end of another leg. Goodbye Thailand, hello Indonesia...
*** You guessed it, more photos below if you scroll right the way down past the annoying ads! ***
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Andrea
The Chinese are coming! In their bright orange life jackets. You aren't kidding. In Borneo I got run down by herds of them. Had no idea