Krabi

Krabi's coast is karst: limestone towers standing straight out of shallow water, which is why the beaches here look unlike anywhere else in Thailand and why one of them cannot be driven to.

Railay is a peninsula rather than an island, cut off from the mainland by cliffs too steep to put a road through. Every arrival is by longtail boat from Ao Nang or Krabi town, and the survey behind these pages found no car park anywhere near either Railay or Phra Nang — not because the mapping is thin, but because there is nothing to park.

That single fact decides the character of the place. No road means no coaches and no day-trip traffic beyond what the boats bring, and it means the last boat is a real constraint on an evening. It also means the climbing: the same cliffs that keep the road out are among the best-known sport climbing in Asia.

SourcesOpenStreetMap