Three days in Ao Nang were plenty

I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m not a beach person. I don’t like lying on the beach under a hot sun. Taking a dip is nice for a quick cool-off, but then I’m done. And I don’t drink a lot, so a lot of the nighttime activities associated with beach resorts are of no interest to me.

Still, I came to Ao Nang, in southern Thailand, for good reasons. I am doing a tour, and I wanted a few days to acclimate to the thirteen-hour time change before that starts. And while I’m not big on beach-related activities, I do love the natural beauty of the seashore. I investigated a number of different beach resorts, including Phuket, but I settled on Ao Nang based on my exhaustive internet research.

I’m now at Krabi Airport awaiting my flight to Bangkok, where my tour begins tomorrow. I’m glad I came here. The internet was right: it was beautiful. But three days were plenty. I’m happy to be leaving and starting the tour.

I prebooked two activities, both of which were excellent. And I walked around the town quite a bit. I enjoyed the food, though, to be honest, I’ve had better Pad Thai in the US. And I gamely tried lying by the pool at my hotel, but it was just too hot and humid for me to be comfortable. I was happier hanging out in my air conditioned hotel room. Even eating great food isn’t very enjoyable when sweat is streaming down my forehead.

But enough of the negativity. Here’s a rundown of the very enjoyable three days I spent in Ao Nang.

Day One

I awoke early (no surprise) and went for a walk on the beach, where I took the photo at the top of this post. At 7am, the beach was deserted and the temperature was pleasant. I got some breakfast and tried lying out at the hotel pool, going for a quick swim whenever it got too hot. It was a nice pool.

Soon it was lunchtime, so I walked back to town (about ten minutes from the hotel) and had some Thai food. Then I went back to the hotel and took a nap.

That lasted five hours.

I got up to brush my teeth and went back to sleep without dinner.

I know you’re not supposed to do that on your first day. You’re supposed to force yourself to stay awake until bedtime. But I couldn’t help it.

Day Two

I think I woke up at 2am. So I just watched TV until it was time to get up.

Four-Island Tour

My activity on day two was a tour to four islands by long-tail boat. There’s a detailed article about long-tail boats at Wikipedia, but all I know is they have a long pole or rod sticking out from the engine at the back of the boat, and the propeller is at the end of the pole. This is how they steer, and I guess they can lift the propeller out of the water to go into “neutral.”

There were fourteen of us on our boat (I was the only one from the US), and there were literally hundreds of them visiting the same islands. (I later discovered there’s no need to prebook anything. You can just go to the beach and pick a tour on the spot; boats depart every hour or so and head to anywhere from one to nine islands for a couple of hours or a full day.) I was hoping for visits to secluded beaches. That was not the case.

Still, the places we visited were beautiful. It’s understandable that they are so popular.

Exploring Ao Nang

After I got back I did a lot of walking around Ao Nang. It’s a pretty typical beach town. It pretty obviously caters to foreign tourists. I think there are more restaurants than people! Nothing very high-end, lots of snack bars and smoothie stands, coffee shops, and generic Thai restaurants hawking Pad Thai or fried rice special for 70 baht (about $2 US). It’s hard to say which other type of business is most prevalent. I walked by dozens of assage parlors, pharmacies, cannabis shops, souvenir shops, and custom tailors who will make you almost anything in 24 hours.

I have to say the quality of hand-crafted items for sale in souvenir shops was some of the best I’ve seen anywhere. Yes, there were a lot of the same items. Many of the shops sold passport covers with a free metallic nameplate custom made while you wait. But there were some very nice ceramics, wooden carvings, and lots more that didn’t seem cookie-cutter. And everything was priced lower than I’d imagine. I succumbed to temptation multiple times.

Speaking of temptation, I got to try the rolled-up ice cream you’ve probably seen videos of. They start with liquid ingredients on a very cold surface, and they mix them up until they start to freeze. Then they spread the out flat on the surface and roll it up. In the end, it was just a dish of ice cream. But it was also a show.

Day Three

Today I visited The Elephant Sanctuary Krabi. This is an ethical shelter with eight elephants that were rescued from doing logging work or from places where people were riding elephants. We learned a lot about Asian elephants and had delightful opportunities to interact with them, feeding them, posing with them, and bathing them.

It was fun and educational.

I’m now in Bangkok at my hotel. I’ve met a couple of the people on my tour, and will be meeting a few more for dinner tonight. And tomorrow morning we leave very early for a flight to Chiang Mai, and the tour gets going!

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Here’s my photo album with all my pics from Ao Nang.