* kseniadas: Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 9 (Ao Nang and Railay Beach)

The Peninsula is even greener than the islands, meaning both land and water. The road cutting into mangrove swamps, followed by selva between the mountains leads to Ao Nang, a small coastal town in the Krabi province. We got there in a colorful wooden songthaew. Its driver was a typical Thai man - short, tanned, with just a couple of hairs sprouting from his upper lip and scarce long hairs right beneath the chin. He first called out desperately for people going to Ao Nang and then stuffed all the white sardines into the truck (the truck’s physical capacity didn’t matter much). An already usual procedure was to stop in the middle of the way and nowhere and trying to figure out where everyone was going. It turned out more than half of the present didn’t have an idea and were immediately kindly provided with suggestions. The fun part though started when English-speaking people pronounced in an oh-so-English way the absolutely not English-sounding place & hotel names and usually got 2 possible answers:’ Eh????’ or ‘ No no!’ The most reassuring was to see the driver recognize your place name and give you an outrageous kind of smiles, with the teeth in his mouth pointing in all directions.
Ao Nang, however, is not a sort of place where you can get lost easily, as it’s virtually (without understatement) two perpendicular roads, one of which runs along the beach. That’s pretty much a typical Thai place.
Coming to Ao Nang, I realized that apparently the only buildings with proper walls can be mostly seen in hotels and 7elevens, while here too, regular Thais apparently live in makeshift(-looking) hovels.
Something different about this town was a new kind of tuk-tuk, which, unlike those in Bangkok and in the North, are normal motorbikes with a sidecar to fit up to 4 people or, if needed easily convertible into a footstall!

The most beautiful beach isn’t exactly in Ao Nang, but on a small peninsula not far away, called Railay Beach. It’s just a 15-minute ride in a longtail boat to reach the western part, lined up with seemingly expensive resorts. From where you can take a kayak to the eastern part and relax on a lovely virgin beach and marvel extraordinary limestone cliffs.