The Thais certainly know how to make interesting modes of transport, zooming up and down the main street are mopeds with attached sidecars for carrying two or three passengers – it’s impressive they move at all. Longboats are another wonder, an old wooden boat with a car engine literally strapped to the back, the drive shaft extended and a propellor attached to the end. It looks like something out of Mad Max, but it works, and got us to Raileys Beach.
We landed at the west beach which was nicely framed by huge limestone cliffs indicative of Thailand, and the sea gently lapping at the shore. There were also a couple of other beaches a short walk away, the east beach, which seemed to have no sand and was closer to a mangrove swamp. The other beach was much nicer; monkeys playing in the trees, caves at one end, islands at the other. We even ventured up a hill/cliff (i.e. near vertical) to a view point, and a lagoon that was just a bit too slimy to get to with sandals on. Gibbons were hooting in the trees as we descended the few hundred metres back to the beach, making it feel like we were in a jungle in the middle of nowhere, not within sight of ten resorts.