David Robinson

Aug 14, 20228 min read

Hanging out in monsoon season in Ao Nang, Krabi

After lots of rain all throughout the night, and into the morning, we had a chilled one to start with enjoying our little terrace for breakfast. It did dry up though so we went out to explore the Ao Nang area a bit. We headed down to see Ao Nang beach during the day- the islands around the bay are impressive and looked moody in the cloud cover. The sea itself though was very choppy from the storm the day before and was at full hide tide making walking on the beach impossible. We headed along the top path following the beach all the way to the end to find the monkey trail. This rickety wooden trail takes about 15 minutes and leads you to Pai Plong beach in an isolated cove. The trail at points was quite steep and it was so muggy we were sweating loads. There are sometimes monkeys on the trail but we didn’t see any, which is fine by us as they often just try to bite you or steal things! Pai Plong beach, despite choppy waves and cloudy weather, was still impressive with towering cliff faces surrounding it and impressive karsts jutting out of the water in the distance. After admiring it for a while we headed back over the monkey trail as it wasn’t the weather to swim or chill on the beach with it being high tide.

To cool off we grabbed some refreshing fruit shakes from a stall on the main road (50B watermelon and 60B mango) and drank them on her little seats on the street. We wandered to check out the other beach near us- Noppharat, during the day. This was also a long stretch but with the tide high all you could see was choppy waves. There are lots of tours to do around the area and initially we were planning on doing a 4 islands tour and a tour to phi phi to see maya bay. However they were still quite expensive and with the weather not being great we decided not to spend the money this time, in case it was just raining.

After chilling back in our aircon for a while we headed to the local Irish pub to watch the Australia vs Engalnd rugby match. There was a few Aussies watching as well as another English guy that lived in Thailand. We had a good chat in the slower parts and ended up doing jager shots with him after already having some beers and mojitos! It was fine though as Dave had found 1000B on the beach that was paying for our drinks and dinner. After losing the match we went to the Landmark night market which is opposite Nopptharat beach. It was buzzing with a fair few different stalls and a dining area at the front. It was not all that cheap but we did manage to find a stall at the back doing local thai food for 70B once we scrolled through their menu. We had a delicious and very spicy Thai basil chicken and rice before treating ourselves to a brownie and a black seasame mochi on the extra cash we had. Not a bad day at all despite the result of the match!

The next day did not go as planned! We were up and ready to go as it was looking like the only nice day we were going to have and we wanted to check out Railay beach in the sunshine. Unfortunately Dave realised that one of his cameras had broken with it coming up with a lens error. This was a bad start to the day and obviously put a bummer on the day.

After a while though we did get out, determined to make the most of our day and went to one of the longtail boat counters where we bought our tickets to Railary for 100B each (one way). We had to wait about 30 minutes for there to be enough other people to fill a boat. We were then piled onto a songthaew and driven to the pier at the end of Nopptharat beach- they end up going from all different places depending on the tide. The boat ride over to Railary was excellent where we were able to see the stunning rock formations jutting out of the see and the colour cliffs around Railay.

When we initially got to Railay there was not much of Railay west beach as the tide was, of course, very high. Instead we made our way to Phra nang beach- we accidentally just walked through Rayavadee resort (very posh) when we should have taken the path along the outside of this. This meant we had to navigate getting onto a small part of the beach- where the tide hadn’t reached yet, rushing through trying not to get too splashed by the waves. At the end of the beach we saw the Princess caves that are filled with penis’- carved by locals to provide fertility and quite a sight! One of the caves also had the waves coming into it so there were just small wooden penises floating in the waves. Despite there not being much beach there was still space for people to be rock climbing on the cliffs (a premium climbing spot) and space for us to dump our stuff so we could go for a swim! On getting ready to leave Dave realised that he only had 1 shoe, after a frantic search of the area he walked along to where we had to cross the water to get on the beach (as they had been clipped to him, or so he thought!). Luckily washed up on the edge of the sure by a rock was his shoe- he only has those or boots and doesn’t like flip flops so he was very happy he found it!

From here we actually found the path along the cliff and not in the resort which leads to Railay East. Some of the caves and overhanging rock formations were beautiful on this path. Halfway along the path is a steep cliff face climb with ropes where you can go to a viewpoint or descend down into the princess lagoon. Despite these supposedly being beautiful it looked like a lot of hard work. With it being very muddy and slippery from the rainfall and us not being in the best frame of mind we decided to skip it this time. Instead we walked along the path of Railay East- which was all flooded with more of a mangrove vibe going on. At the end we found a busy restaurant where we managed to get fried rice and noodles for 80B. Very full we made our way across the island through the walking street which had a surprising range of restaurants, marts and bars- with reasonable prices if you are spending a day or two there. Having already eaten we just went to check out Railay beach.

Thankfully the tide had gone out a bit which meant there was actually a long stretch of golden sand. We walked to the end, trying to find the path that would take us over to Tonsai beach. We had no luck with finding this so instead went to chill on the beach and play in the water. The waves were still quite big and strong- which Dave loved and he helped me enjoy them a bit jumping over them. However just as we were really enjoying ourselves we had some more bad luck. Our waterproof insta360go2 camera just flew out of the stand and due to visibility being zero and the waves/ current being so strong it was just gone. And we were devastated as it was just another thing that day. After this we didn’t feel like chilling out on the beach so we packed up, walked to the longtail boats and bought our tickets back to Ao Nang beach. After the journey back we wallowed in our room for a while being a mixture of sad and frustrated at the day. We did get out in the evening again as the weather held up and we watched the sunset over Nopptharat beach before getting a Tom Yum mixed meat soup (80B each) at the night market and milo shakes (30B each) on the way back to cheer us up.

Photos: Railay beach with a beach, cliffs, selfie, sunset/ sky noppharat beach, night market tom yum

The following day we had monsoon rain all day so we mainly stayed inside editing and just having a quiet day. We did head out into the rain though when it had calmed down a bit to get lunch and to hunt down a coffee. We ordered 60B pad thai from the stall on the corner of Ao Nang beach (the lady is just always there selling pad thai/noodles, shakes, roti or coconut icecream). We ate this on the steps of a shut down shop so we had a bit of cover. The rain had slowed so we decided to walk up to Tesco lotus for something to do and I had also seen a decent looking coffee shop up there doing coffee about half the price of the one on the beach strip. Part way up the road though we noticed that all the shops had gone dark all the way along the road. As we walked past the coffee shop it was also blacked out so we continued on to Tesco hoping the power would come back. And just as we got back to Lekker coffee we saw the shops around us start to have power again, which meant….coffee! We had a nice flat white in Lekker coffee as the rain started pouring down again (75B each). This was the first proper coffee we had had since leaving the UK and the first time we had really wanted a hot drink too. We savoured it and then made our way back out into the rain. It absolutely chucked it down and everything was soaked by the time we got back to our accommodation. The coffee had made it worth it though! In the evening when it was dry we found another restaurant doing cheapish food (140B in total) to eat in as it was quite late by this point.

Our last day in Krabi the weather was still not meant to be great. We had initially wanted to rent a scooter to explore the surrounding area a bit but it didn’t seem worth it with the weather. After a bit of rain in the morning it did clear up though. So to make the most of the dry weather we waited for a songthaew on the main street and this took us into Krabi town so we could have a wander (50B pp and they just circle round major places in the area). The town had a completely different vibe to Ao Nang which is very touristy. Krabi town feels more local. We went into the vogue shopping mall where the songthaew dropped us off to go to the food court for lunch. We found some very cheap food, a papaya salad (25B), and 2 versions of hainanese chicken (40B) each.

Fully stuffed we walked along the riverfront before heading up to the urban forest. This is a mangrove forest on the edge of the town/river where there is a free concrete walking path through it. I spotted a monitor lizard and it was nice to walk through somewhere in the shade. After getting a feel for the town and getting very hot we grabbed a couple of iced bubble teas from Momas and jumped on the songthaew again back to Ao Nang. On the way back it started chucking it down again so we had left just in time! In the evening we went out one last time to Ao Nang beach to watch the sunset before heading back to the Landmark night market for dinner as it was a good close option for cheap food and a good atmosphere. We also headed back to the stall by the beach, this time to get peanut butter and condensed milk roti for dessert which was delicious (50B). We basically could have lived from that ladies stall whilst we were there!