After staying couple days in Ao Nang on my last day I decided to visit probably nicest beach in area – Hat Phra Nang. Although Lonely Planet calls Railay(Rai Leh) most stunning beach location in all Thailand I would name it nice but not the “most”. Ok is not about this today. How you can get there from Ao Nang? Only by long tail boat. It takes about 15-20 minutes and cost 80BTH at the moment. You can go from Ao Nang directly to Hat Phra Nang beach or go to Hat Rai Leh West and then walk to Hat Phra Nang beach. It is about another 20 minutes walk, but I would recommend to do that walk to see how different is Hat Rai Leh East side of peninsula.
Day was not the best for beach. It started raining, so didn’t stay on the beach more then half an hour. Was no any long tail boats on Hat Phra Nang beach so I went back to Hat Rai Leh West. It looks was no shortage of long tail boats here.
I showed my return ticket to Ao Nang and guy pointed where I should wait. Long tail boats go when there are at least 8 persons. In Ao Nang it took about 10 minutes till was enough people to go. But different story in Railay. The couple I met in waiting area was waiting for a boat more then an hour. It was strange because boats were leaving almost every five minutes. I didn’t realize there are at least two different companies which transfer people from Ao Nang to Railay and back. I did wait less then an hour, but situation wasn’t very pleasant – I needed to catch bus to Bangkok that afternoon, another couple was going to airport – and boat owners even didn’t discuss possibility to go earlier. It was happy ending and I made on time to my bus, but don’t make mistake I did – don’t buy return ticket (it is not saving you any money anyway) and check which boats will leave earlier (i.e. more people are waiting) before buying your ticket.
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