Railay Beach

Railay Beach is ten minutes on a longtail boat from Ao Nang. There is a ticket booth right in front of the stairs down to the beach. Daytime tickets are 100baht for one way- prices change after 6pm.

Railay Beach is a beautiful white sand beach with resorts set back from the shore and some trees offering a bit of relief from the sun (no one uses/sells beach umbrellas here). They also have an area roped off for swimming—keeping you far enough from the boats. Unfortunately there’s sea lice in the water..technically harmless but some people feel a sting-which I didn’t but I have a lot of bite marks from them. 

Myself and Anthony rented a kayak for an hour- 200 baht for a two person kayak which was a really good deal. There are giant rock structures (mountains? Cliffs? Little islands? Idk what the right term is to call them) that we went out to paddle around. We went through a cave under one of the structures and around to see other beaches on the other side of Railay. We were paying attention to the time but not totally to where we were going— when we decided to head back to Railay...we couldn’t recognize which beach it was. There were less boats and the tide was going out so the beach looked so much bigger and like there was less people in it. After paddling past the beach and ending up being able to see Ao Nang beach we realized that we had gone past Railay and needed to turn back. Easier said then done because the current had picked up and the water was getting choppy so it felt like we were paddling in place. It took us an extra half an hour but we made it back to shore (exhausted).

There is a little street right off of the beach with shops and restaurants- which were much more expensive than Ao Nang but there’s limited choice when you’re on a beach that you can only get to by boat.