Railay Beach

Where it sits. Railay is a peninsula on the Andaman coast of Krabi Province, about 20 kilometres from Krabi town, and although it is physically attached to the mainland it behaves like an island. Limestone headlands rise straight out of the jungle at its neck, several hundred metres of vertical and overhanging rock with no road cut through them, so every arrival is by longtail boat. The peninsula holds four separate strands, each with a distinct character: Railay West, a broad west-facing beach of pale sand where the sun sets between offshore karst towers; Railay East, which faces a mangrove shore and dries out to mud at low tide, and where the cheaper rooms are; Phra Nang Beach at the southern tip, generally rated among the finest beaches in Thailand; and Ton Sai, around the northern headland, historically the climbers' encampment. A flat concrete path connects west, east and Phra Nang across the low waist of the peninsula in about ten minutes on foot.

The rock. The cliffs are Permian limestone laid down as reef and lagoon sediment more than 250 million years ago, then uplifted, fractured and dissolved into the tower karst that defines this coast. The rock is riddled with caves, and its overhanging faces are hung with tufas and stalactites — mineral columns formed by dripping water — which is precisely why climbers came. Route development began in earnest around 1989, when visiting climbers bolted the first lines on the Thaiwand Wall and the walls behind Phra Nang, and Railay now has several hundred bolted routes across dozens of sectors, from beginner slabs on Muay Thai Wall to steep three-dimensional tufa climbing on Tonsai. Salt air corrodes fixed hardware fast, and re-bolting campaigns funded by the climbing community are an ongoing part of life here. Deep water soloing — climbing unroped above the sea and falling into it — is run as a boat trip out to the stacks around Ko Poda.

Phra Nang and the shrine. At the southern end, beneath a huge overhang, is Tham Phra Nang Nok, the outer princess cave. It holds a shrine that fishermen have used for generations, dedicated to a sea princess of local legend, and offerings there take the form of carved wooden phalluses, hundreds of them, stacked and painted, left in the hope of good catches and fertility. It is a working folk shrine rather than a curiosity, and photographing it warrants some restraint. Above it, a steep and genuinely muddy scramble on knotted ropes climbs to a viewpoint over both coasts, with a branch dropping to a hidden brackish lagoon in a sinkhole. This is not a walk; it involves hauling on ropes over polished clay and people are injured on it every season.

What you actually see today. Railay is developed but low-rise, with resorts pushed back behind the treeline and no cars, no motorbikes and no roads at all — everything moves by foot or by boat. Longtails idle in the shallows on both sides. Phra Nang has boat vendors who cook som tam, grilled corn and cold drinks from the sterns of moored longtails, which is a better lunch than most of the restaurants. Sunset on Railay West is the daily event, with the karst stacks of Happy Island and Ko Rang Nok silhouetted a few hundred metres offshore. The Diamond Cave boardwalk on the east side leads through a lit chamber of flowstone and columns. Kayaks rented on the east beach reach the mangroves and the caves under the northern headland.

Getting there and timing. Longtails leave from Ao Nang beach for Railay West in about 15 minutes, and from Krabi town's Chao Fa pier for Railay East in about 45. Boats depart when eight to ten passengers have gathered rather than on a timetable, and they stop running when the sea gets up, so an evening return in the wet season is unreliable. There is no pier: you wade the last few metres in and out, which matters for luggage. Crossings from Phuket and Ko Lanta run in the high season. The dry northeast monsoon from November to April gives calm water and dry rock and is also the busy period; the southwest monsoon from May to October brings afternoon downpours, greasy limestone, cheaper rooms and a much quieter peninsula. Between the boat wading, the soft sand and the rope scrambles, none of Railay works for wheelchair users, and the East beach path is the only surface that is reliably level.