They absolutely will not budge unless the boat is full. The long tail drivers that is; unless you’re happy to pay for the unoccupied seats. Therefore, don’t buy a ticket unless you see a horde of humans waiting to hop aboard. Deciding to venture to the Ao Nammao pier, and paying 60 baht for the ticket each, was clearly a bad idea. Hindsight teaches you many things though and thankfully we were permitted to change the applicable date.
Expect to get wet, so wear shorts. If they’re long; roll them up. Don’t panic when the boat rocks dangerously close to capsizing each time someone boards – it’ll take a lot to flip one of these. Better still, use some intelligence and move over to the opposing side so as to counterbalance the moment. These things didn’t occur to anyone on this boat, so screams, gasps and curse-words aside, we reversed and were taken at break-neck speed to Railay West.
The boat moors on the
nice side (West). I specify nice as the beach
looks nice. That has no bearing on my opinion of the place (to which I’ll elaborate in a later post), and if you head through the cut to the East side, it’s
less nice. Hotels here range from the mildly expensive to the utterly outrageous - 12500 baht for an evening is around £250. Having wondered around for an hour or so and mutually and telepathically decided that my sister and I needed a break from each other, I headed off to hire a sea kayak.
It’s a shame I’d forgotten my watch and was simply too scared to lose my camera to take pictures. The scenery and limestone cliffs are gorgeous and perfect for wide-angle photography. What they’re not ideal for, however, is kayaking around the far side of. I decided to tempt fate and having won, was glad to be back in safer waters. Or so I thought: Double-taking what appeared to be a plastic bag, I stopped the boat hard and paddled slowly closer. Shocked and scared, I sat still, with my paddle close in the boat as a white jellyfish around a metre wide bobbed by my kayak. I’d love to identify the species to know if it was poisonous. Either way, I paddled back to land rather promptly.
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