Location reviews are where we take hours of exploration, boundary breaking, and life changing experiences, and boil them down into a shallow overview of a location we’ve visited. This is the good, the bad, the epic, and the smelly, based solely on our experiences, personal preferences, and poor decisions. Heed at your own risk.
What are you even talking about?
A jaw dropping beach in Southern Thailand’s Krabi region accessible only by boat due to the steep surrounding mountains cutting it off from the rest of civilization. There is one main beach (Railay West) as well as two connected beaches (Tonsai Beach and Phra Nang Beach). There is also a backside dock/mangrove coast for arrivals from Krabi Town (Railay East).
Pitch It To Shark Tank
Studies show the majority of Americans would actually prefer to live inside a postcard than their real lives. Well sharks, that dream is now a reality, with my new company: Railay Beach. With Railay, you get all of the isolation, inconvenience, and slow service times of an island, without the high transportation costs of actually being off the mainland. Not to mention, with a surrounding terrain more jagged and intimidating than Kevin’s heart (that’s right, lookin at you Mr. W!), the product will sell itself based on photos alone. That’s why I’m asking for one longboat to receive a 4 night stay in my company: Railay Beach. So what do you say, sharks? Who wants to go to the beach?? Before I field offers, I’d also like to mention this deal is contingent on all of you keeping your shirts once we get there. Except maybe Robert.
What Would Your Mother Say?
“Oooh, a Happy Shake. That sounds nice!”
“You are NOT climbing up there.”
“How’s your tummy? Are you feeling better?”
Demographics
Ages 30-60. Couples, day trippers, pot heads, empty nesters/thirsty Canadian cougars, photographers, foodbourne illnesses.
What They’ll Tell You To Do
Phra Nang Cave Beach: One of the three adjacent shores that compose the Railay area, this, admittedly stunning, beach is likely where Railay gets a growing reputation for overcrowding. We kayaked here from Railay West (10 min), and while it’s absolutely worth seeing, especially if you want to eat a meal cooked in a long boat or check out a cave housing hundreds of sacred stone dicks (seriously), the tour group crowd, relatively cramped beach space, and super fancy resort with a mean security guard made this our least favorite of the three beaches at our fingertips.
What You Actually Should Do
Ton Sai Beach: On the other side of Railay West is this rock climbing paradise. The surrounding peaks rival its iconic neighbor in scale and unstable-stock-market topography, but as an added bonus you get to watch dozens of rock climbers get increasingly tiny as they work their way up the often past-vertical faces. There’s a laid back bar with a good view of the various ascents, and honestly not much else. The perfect place for people who put a premium on unpopulated sands.
Spend The Night In Railay, Not Ao Nang: This was something we wrestled with
after reading a lot of conflicting opinions online, and we were beyond happy with our choice. It’s definitely subjective, and if you prefer more than 5 hotel options, access to actual roads, and a parade of prostitutes strolling through your nighttime cocktail session, you can stay in Ao Nang and easily treat Railay as your beach for the day. But if you stay in Railay itself, something magical happens when the sun sets and the longboats shut down for night. This strange, communal, parents-are-gone-for-the-weekend energy emerges, and the handful of people who remain have this weird ramshackle beach village all to themselves. And no matter how you choose to spend the rest of the night, you’ll wake up with THAT beach at your doorstep.
Would We Go Back?
A return visit is actually already in the works (after we thought twice about returning there again on this trip). It’s likely the best beach we’ve ever been to. It will take an act of God to keep us from coming back.
Yo This Place Lit?
This is another area where I believe the prevailing online sentiment is misleading. You’ll read many places that Railay devoid of nightlife, completely shutting down after sunset with everyone essentially calling it a night. It’s important to remember that when you read reviews like this, people are usually comparing the nightlife to the entertainment complexes of Ao Nang or the youthy beach discos of Phi Phi. So no, Railay does not operate on that energy level, but if you match its wavelength, you can have a night that compares with any party island around.
Instead of the familiar Thai nightlife excesses, here you get beach bar heaven; Places to drink Chang into the wee hours while feeling the sand on your toes and listening to locals enthusiastically butcher Eagle Eye Cherry on a flat guitar. The bars on Railay East are more upbeat and well known, but the real gems are tucked along the unpaved central section of the walking path between East and West. These are handmade shacks built out of sticks with appropriately cheesy neon lights snaking across every surface, hilariously stoned bartenders, cheap joints on demand, and the friendliest crowd imaginable. Railay has an indelible vibe and staying there is intoxicating enough. But these places don’t hurt either.
Gramworthy?
Let’s put it this way, you’ve probably unknowingly double tapped about 30 pictures of Railay Beach without realizing it. It’s that stunning. Rugged, Land-Before-Time karsts, seemingly recently ripped raw and smoldering out of a violent earth, plunge recklessly into the blue Andaman sea, perfectly poised to serve as a prehistoric frame for the setting sun every single night. The rocks here aren’t static greenscreen projections either, but rather immediate, tactile, fucking climbable elements of the jarringly dramatic foreground. Even other beaches cut from a similar scenic cloth can’t compete. It is the earth at it’s most primordial, gorgeous, mysterious, and engaging. The kind of place that you feel in your gut when you see it. Especially if you ate at some of the restaurants…
Yea But…
Some will tell you Railay is a spoiled paradise, a once shimmering jewel now scratchy and smudged from the countless grubby hands picking it up to take a quick selfie with it. And look, we weren’t here 8-10 years ago, so we can’t attest to how pristine Railay used to be, but we can confidently say it is far from overdeveloped or inundated with crowds. As mentioned above, the three beaches range in population density from Phra Nang at the crowded top to Ton Sai at the deserted bottom, with Railay West occupying a happy medium in between. If we’re being honest, we’d prefer a beach like Railay with enough activity and simple amenities to make a multi-day stay even possible, over a completely deserted stretch of sand with fewer beer stands than footprints good for a memorable swim/photo-op and not much else. I can’t say that Railay will always maintain this optimal level of occupancy, but I wouldn’t let overly Malthusian TripAdvisor reviews dissuade you from visiting.
One word of caution, Railay West has no real boat dock. So arriving or departing with luggage is a matter of trudging through a few yards of shallow water and holding your shit over your head until you reach a longboat to throw it into. It’s not as bad as we thought it might be, and was actually far easier than our departure from Ao Nang, but it’s something to think about, especially if you’re traveling with a converted bank vault as a suitcase.
If Railay Were A Kanye Album…
It would be My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Grand yet intricate, cinematic yet disjointed, epic yet intimate. This is the artist at the peak of his powers, flipping flaws into strengths and looking fly in the process. Pimpin’ on Mount Olympus indeed.
Stream Of Consciousness
Phra Nang penis cave is a literal cave full of penises; Hand sanitizer, people!; SUNSETS; The Black Pearl hippy bar; Kohindoor Indian Restaurant; Walking street; Sand Sea Resort; Woooow!; Really? Railay; The unfailing comedy of inflatable beach vaginas; Relying on jacked Norwegian rock climbers to carry Sara’s Megabag to shore; Steroid use in firedancing is real and we need to talk about it.
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