Phuket & the Andaman Coast
Between Phuket and Krabi, the Andaman Sea opens into a wide, sheltered bay studded with some of the strangest and most beautiful scenery in Asia. Phang Nga Bay is a drowned landscape of limestone, and its towers rise sheer from the green water, some a few feet across, some the size of city blocks, their flanks hung with jungle and their bases undercut by the tide into dark overhangs. The whole of the bay is a national park, and the best of it cannot be reached by road: it belongs to the boats, and above all to the longtail, the wooden craft with the upswept prow and the rattling engine that is the taxi, fishing boat and tour vessel of the whole coast.
A day on the bay has a rhythm. The first stop for most visitors is Khao Phing Kan, where a needle of rock called Ko Tapu stands in the shallows and has been known as James Bond Island ever since The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed here in 1974; it is busy, but a dawn arrival still earns a quiet moment. The deeper magic is in the hongs, the collapsed sea caves that have become hidden lagoons inside the islands, open to the sky and reached by paddling a sea kayak through low tunnels at the right state of tide. Koh Panak and Koh Hong hold the best of them, and floating in a silent green pool walled by cliffs, with hornbills overhead and monkeys on the ledges, is as close to another world as Thailand gets. Lunch is often at Koh Panyee, a Muslim fishing village built entirely on stilts against a cliff, with its football pitch floating on the water.
Push further and the Andaman keeps giving. From Krabi, the cliff-walled Railay peninsula is reachable only by longtail, with Phra Nang cave beach among the loveliest strands in the country; the lagoon of Krabi's own Koh Hong is a jade bowl ringed by rock, and the islands of Koh Poda and Koh Gai make a classic four-island day. Further out, Koh Phi Phi's twin islands rise from a sea so clear you can read the reef from the boat, with Maya Bay now carefully managed to let its corals recover. We build these as private days with our own boats and timings, so you reach the lagoons at the right tide and before the crowds, and we choose between Phuket and Krabi as a base depending on the season and the shape of your trip.
