Feb 17 - Get some cheap lunch at a nearby restaurant (they are much cheaper when on a side road rather than the main drag), and take the free shuttle to the coast. Fight the sunburned crowds to get a round trip long-tailed boat ticket to Railay Beach, about ten minutes south. It costs 200 Baht/person. The vendor, uncharacteristic for Thailand, looks tired and crabby as she collects the fare and tears out the tickets. Maybe lines of confused tourists all day long have taken their toll on her Buddhist tolerance.
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Railay Beach is similar to that of Ao Nang, except smaller. It is low tide so the mud flats are exposed. Some expensive-looking resorts here, blocking almost all the access across the narrow sandy isthmus to the eastern shore (see map). Overall we aren’t very impressed with it. The long-tailed boats crowd the sandier part of the beach, and their engines are loud. This place is just too popular for its own good.
Find our way to the southern headlands, after being unceremoniously turned back when we try to walk across at the southern end of the beach “Excuse me sir, this is private property. Do you have a room number?” The east side of the isthmus is just mud flats. Tractors chug across them, towing trailers full of people going to and from long-tailed boats out past the flats. Some caves along the cliffs to the south of here, including Phra Nang Cave, where macaques lurk along the fences and pose for photos. So many people transfixed by them and taking videos, which seems odd given how abundant they are in the region.
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While Janet and Odette go to a shaded part of the beach, I scramble up the hill to Bat Cave.
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