Gold, Then Limestone

Eleven days from Wat Arun to Maya Bay at seven in the morning: one morning of Bangkok temples, then Krabi, Phi Phi and the whole Andaman.

By Ujjwol Kayastha · October 13–23, 2024 · Thailand

Eleven days that begin with gold and end with limestone. Bangkok first, and only briefly: a morning across the river with the roofline catching fire and Wat Arun going up in white porcelain behind a stallholder's yellow umbrella. Then Don Mueang in the middle of the afternoon of the second day, and after that it is all water. Krabi, Ao Nang, four islands in a boat with an absurdly long propeller shaft, Phi Phi with no roads on it, Maya Bay at seven in the morning, Phuket, and one last island an hour south of that before the flight back north.

days: 11
at Maya Bay: 06:59
domestic flights: 2
photographs taken: 736

One morning of temples (Day 01 · Oct 13–14)

BANGKOK → KHAO SAN → KLONG BANG LUANG → WAT ARUN → DON MUEANG → KRABI → AO NANG

21:05 Bangkok, in the city
09:08 Khao San
10:15 Klong Bang Luang
11:05 Wat Arun
15:51 Don Mueang
18:04 Krabi
21:24 Ao Nang

We land after dark and see nothing of Bangkok at all, which is the correct way to arrive anywhere. The first photograph of the whole trip is stamped 21:05 and is already in the middle of the city; the ones after it are on Khao San Road, where a green plaster Hulk stands outside a currency exchange and gets photographed by everybody, us included. By morning the street has an orange Beetle parked on it and the light is doing that thing it does in the tropics before nine.

An orange Volkswagen Beetle convertible parked on an old Bangkok street — Somebody keeps a Beetle on this street · 07:41

Three travellers posing beside a green Hulk statue on Khao San Road — Khao San, and a green man · 09:08

Then west, over the river and out of the guidebook version of the city. Klong Bang Luang is a market strung along a canal on stilts, all timber walkways and red lanterns with a gold roofline through the trees, and at ten in the morning it belongs mostly to the people who live on it. It is genuinely lovely and it is also about forty degrees in the shade.

A temple courtyard with ornate golden roof finials and red pillars — Gold on the roofline · 10:15

A timber walkway with red lanterns at Klong Bang Luang floating market — Klong Bang Luang · 10:25

Wat Arun by eleven, which is the one everybody comes for and deserves to be. Two enormous prangs encrusted with broken porcelain, so densely detailed up close that the eye gives up and reads them as texture, and from twenty metres back just two white spires taking up most of the sky.

The white spire of Wat Arun rising behind a yellow market umbrella — Wat Arun, over an umbrella · 11:05

Two ornate white porcelain-covered spires of Wat Arun against cloud — Two prangs and most of the sky · 11:22

One morning of temples, and then somebody says the thing that ends every plan ever made, which is what if we just went south instead. Don Mueang, 15:51

At 15:51 we are at Don Mueang. At five o'clock we are over the Gulf with the wing out of the window and the sea going from grey to that ridiculous blue. At 18:04 the phone puts us at Krabi airport, and by half past nine we are walking into a guesthouse in Ao Nang, taking our shoes off outside a door in a dark timber corridor.

An aircraft wing above sea and cloud with the sun low — Wing over the water · 17:00

A dark timber guesthouse walkway at night with shoes outside a door — Ao Nang, shoes off · 21:24

Four islands and a sunset (Day 02 · Oct 15)

AO NANG → PODA → KO KAI → THE SANDBAR → RAILAY

09:54 breakfast, such as it is
13:27 off the beach
14:51 Ko Kai
16:48 the shallows
17:28 Railay
20:25 back at Ao Nang
21:16 the shrine, lit

Breakfast is mango sticky rice, which in Thailand is a legitimate breakfast and not a dessert somebody has smuggled forward in the day. Blue rice, from butterfly pea. A separate cup of coconut cream to pour over it. There is no version of this I would turn down at ten in the morning.

Mango sticky rice with butterfly-pea blue rice and coconut cream — Breakfast, and no argument about it · 09:54

The four-island trip out of Ao Nang is the most package-tour thing available in Krabi and it is worth every baht. A longtail, a cooler, and a loop south past Poda to Ko Kai, where the limestone stack leans out over water shallow enough to stand in and a starfish is going about its afternoon two feet from the boat.

A pale starfish half-buried in wet sand under clear shallow water — Minding its own business · 15:20

A tall sailing yacht at anchor on open water under a cloudy sky — Somebody else’s afternoon · 15:42

Then the sandbar, which is the part nobody warns you about: at the right state of tide the sea pulls back off a spit of sand between three islands and you can walk a hundred metres out with the boat still floating beside you.

Standing in the sea with the boat still afloat · 16:48

A longtail boat moored in turquoise shallows off an empty sandbar — The whole sandbar, and one boat on it · 17:01

Railay last, because Railay is where the light goes. You cannot drive there. The peninsula is cut off by cliffs, so everyone arrives the same way, by boat, between two walls of limestone that come straight down into the sea, and at six the sun drops behind the headland and every longtail in the bay turns into a silhouette with a very long propeller shaft.

Two limestone headlands rising sheer from the sea with a yacht between them — Arriving between two walls · 17:28

A longtail boat silhouetted against an orange sunset — A longtail waiting it out · 18:11

Back at Ao Nang by half eight, and the last frame of the day is a shrine on a street corner, gold and lit up hard against the dark, which is a thing you stop noticing after a week here and should not.

A small gold Thai shrine brightly lit at night on a street corner — A shrine at the end of the street · 21:16

Moving to the island (Day 03 · Oct 16–17)

AO NANG → KRABI → KO PHI PHI DON

13:05 Klong Jilad pier
15:30 Phi Phi in sight
16:49 Tonsai
09:35 the viewpoint
14:30 low tide

Phi Phi has no roads, which means no cars, which means the entire island sounds like a generator and a hundred conversations. We stay at a place called P.P. Garden Home Bungalow, an A-frame behind a wall of tropical planting with chalkboards out front, reached down a lane you would never find twice.

A timber A-frame guesthouse behind tropical planting with a hand-painted sign — P.P. Garden Home · 16:49

The next morning goes up the hill to the viewpoint, which is the photograph everyone has seen: two crescent bays meeting at a sand isthmus with the village in between, longtails scattered across water the colour of a swimming pool. What the photograph does not show is the man in the purple shirt sweeping the path below it, at ten in the morning, in that heat.

A person on a hillside above two turquoise bays meeting at a sand isthmus — The famous view, and me not looking at it · 09:35

A turquoise bay with longtail boats seen from a hillside, a gardener sweeping — The bay, and a man sweeping it · 10:01

By half two the tide has gone somewhere else entirely and taken the bay with it. What was swimmable at breakfast is a quarter mile of ribbed wet sand with the boats sitting flat on it, and the karsts out on the horizon looking further away than they were.

A wide expanse of wet sand at low tide framed by dark leaves, an island beyond — Low tide takes the whole bay away · 14:30

Maya Bay before breakfast (Day 04 · Oct 18)

PHI PHI DON → MAYA BAY → PILEH → PHUKET → PATONG

06:50 under way
06:59 Maya Bay
07:09 the sign
07:38 on the sand
07:49 the spirit house
08:34 Pileh Lagoon
13:11 Phuket
19:11 Patong

You leave in the dark for this one. Ten to seven, twin Honda 250s on the back and the karsts of Phi Phi Leh coming up out of a grey morning, and the whole point is to be there before the day boats from Phuket arrive.

The wake of a speedboat at dawn between limestone islands — Two Hondas, and the karsts coming up · 06:53

The floating jetty, already a queue · 06:59

There is a sign at the foot of the cliff that says Welcome to Maya Bay, and by twenty past seven there are already enough of us on the sand that a photograph of the four of us has about forty strangers in the back of it.

A sign reading Welcome to Maya Bay at the foot of a limestone cliff — It does say welcome · 07:09

Four friends on the sand at Maya Bay with limestone islands behind — Four of us, and everybody else · 07:21

Walk far enough along it, though, and there is still a stretch with nothing on it at all: the cave mouth dark under the overhang, the tide just off it, and not one person in the frame.

An empty crescent of pale sand under an overhanging cliff with a cave mouth — A stretch of it still empty · 07:27

And there are sharks in it. Blacktip reef sharks, a few metres out from where everybody is standing, working the shallow end of the bay in ones and twos, small and entirely uninterested. Nobody gets out of the water. They are the best thing about the place, and they are here in these numbers because the bay spent four years closed to boats and was left alone to get them back.

By 07:38 that is over. There are perhaps two hundred people on that sand, and the honest version of Maya Bay in October is a spectacular amphitheatre of green limestone with a slow-moving crowd along the waterline. It is still worth it. The cliffs do not care how many of us there are, and the water is a colour that does not photograph properly.

A crowded white sand beach below towering green limestone cliffs — Maya Bay at 07:38, not early enough · 07:38

The cliffs do not care how many of us there are. Maya Bay, 07:38

Behind the beach there is a boardwalk through the trees to the other side of the island, and at the top of it a teak spirit house on the rock, hung with fresh marigolds. Somebody comes out to it every morning before the boats. Then back down to the waterline, where the two headlands frame the way out and the sand goes on being the colour it is.

A teak spirit house hung with orange marigolds on rocks, a man tending it — Freshly garlanded, before the boats · 07:49

The gap between two limestone headlands seen low from the waterline — The mouth of the bay · 07:50

A speedboat bow running into Pileh Lagoon between towering limestone walls — Pileh, and the walls that make it · 08:14

Pileh Lagoon after, which is a flooded crack in the island with walls a hundred metres high and water the temperature of a bath. Then the ferry, and by early afternoon we are in Phuket, which after four days of boats feels like arriving in a capital city. Patong makes this explicit at about seven in the evening, in neon, from a gantry over the road.

A neon sign reading Patong Beach Phuket Thailand at night over a street — Patong announces itself · 19:11

Old Town, one more island, a midnight flight (Day 05 · Oct 19–20)

PATONG → PHUKET TOWN → CHALONG → RACHA YAI → SUVARNABHUMI

17:34 Phuket Town
18:31 dinner on a stick
18:46 Old Town, lit
09:50 out past Chalong
10:10 first island
12:01 Racha Yai
16:01 Chalong
23:58 Suvarnabhumi

Patong is Patong and needs no further description from me. The better evening is inland, in Phuket Town, where the Sino-Portuguese shophouses are and a wat sits across four lanes of traffic looking entirely unbothered by them. Dinner is a battered thing on a stick under a lattice of cheese and mustard, eaten standing up, and I have thought about it more than several proper meals since.

A Thai temple with red tiered roofs seen across a street with parked vans — A wat across four lanes · 17:34

A battered corn dog drizzled with cheese and mustard held up in a market — Dinner, structurally speaking · 18:31

Then the lights come on over the old town and the whole street turns into the reason people move to this island: pastel shophouses, festoon lights slung across the road, and about four hundred motorbikes finding room.

A Sino-Portuguese shophouse street in Phuket Old Town at night with festoon lights — Old Town after the lights come on · 18:46

The last islands go south out of Chalong. There is a stop first, an hour out, at a beach where the deckchairs come in wooden and the life jackets come in pink and there are a great many of both. Racha Yai after that, where you land over a floating green walkway laid across the shallows because the water is too clear and too shallow for a pier.

Rows of pink life jackets on wooden deckchairs under trees beside a beach — Pink, in quantity · 10:10

A green floating pontoon walkway leading to a palm-fringed beach — Arriving over a walkway · 12:01

Racha is one concrete lane, a row of shopfronts, and a fleet of tractors doing the work that cars do anywhere else. They tow open carriages with striped canopies, painted red, and they are the entire public transport system of the island.

The island’s entire transport department · 12:07

A quiet lane under tall coconut palms beside a white wall — One lane and some coconuts · 14:26

A red open-sided trailer carriage with a striped canopy parked under palms — The island bus, in red · 15:09

Back at Chalong just after four, Patong by twenty to five, and then the airport, and at two minutes to midnight the phone puts us at Suvarnabhumi with sand still in everything we own.

The city, on the way out (Day 06 · Oct 21–23)

BANGKOK → SUKHUMVIT → PRATUNAM → DON MUEANG

01:18 hotel, finally
09:13 rain, then not
20:13 out into the warm
22:13 the platform
12:45 Pratunam
22:18 last night out
09:18 Don Mueang

Three days of Bangkok at the end, and this time nowhere in particular to be. It rains overnight and the first thing on the 21st is an empty street holding the sky in its puddles, which is the version of this city nobody photographs because it lasts about twenty minutes.

A wet empty street reflecting gabled shophouses under a grey sky — After rain, before anyone is up · 09:13

The rest is walking, and the particular pleasure of a city that is still warm at eight in the evening and does not expect anything of you: an elevated platform at ten at night with a station clock and nobody on it, and Pratunam in the middle of the next day with taxis in green and pink and yellow going four abreast.

A Bangkok plaza at night with palms and lit shopfronts — Still warm at eight · 20:13

An empty elevated BTS platform at night with a station clock — The last train is not for a while · 22:13

A Bangkok shopping street with a mall, towers and coloured taxis — Pratunam, taxis in every colour · 12:45

Don Mueang on the morning of the 23rd, and that is eleven days. Gold at one end and limestone at the other, and 736 photographs that between them remember the order of it better than I do.

Gold at one end and limestone at the other. Don Mueang, 09:18

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