There are some places in my travel map that I can never forget. Of all the beaches that I have seen so far around the world, if I have to choose one, that would be Maya Bay in Thailand. A beach so perfect that any other beach that you see after that will look like a compromise. I will call it the “Maya Bay effect”!

After our wedding, Sarah and I have travelled to a few countries together and many of them were beach destinations. But whenever we go to a beach, subconsciously I compare it to the Maya Bay and will remark, “yeah, it looks nice, but…” “…not as good as the Maya Bay”. This used to make her angry and retort, “then why didn’t you take me there?” Well, when this trip was planned, I wanted to ensure that I take her to this beautiful beach right on her birthday!

The birthday girl and I woke up and were ready for our trip for the day. The tour agent picked us up from our hotel and along with several others and we were on our way. After the bus picked up other tourists, we got down at the boat terminal where we met our tour guide who took us to our speed boat.

The first destination for us for the day was Bamboo island. Contrary to its name, there’s no bamboo on this island! We got off the boat and walked on the beach of this island. As is typical of the beaches in Thailand, it has beautiful white sand against the turquoise blue water of the Andaman sea. But to my surprise, the temperature was on the higher side. Having been in Thailand during late March in 2011, I was expecting a much milder heat during the month of January! After walking a bit around the island, we sat down in the shade of the trees by the beach. After relaxing there for a while, we got back to our speedboat for the next destination.

Our next destination was the Phi Phi Don island. But en route to this island, they stopped for open water snorkeling. Since both of us were non-swimmers, we decided not to do this. And even the tour guide suggested against non-swimmers getting down for snorkeling. This was in contrast to what I had seen back in 2011 when they encouraged everyone to do snorkeling after wearing the lifejacket. “Maybe they did have some mishap in between”, I wondered.

After the snorkeling, we got to the Phi Phi Don island. It was lunch time and they had arranged buffet lunch for us as a part of the tour package. We got into the restaurant and had our Thai lunch. The food was really good and along with the tropical fruits, it was perfect. After having the food, we settled down at the beach to click some photographs and then got back into our boat.

Back in the boat, we were on our way to the highlight of the trip, the Maya Bay. But on the way, we got to a really beautiful place called the piley bay. Though there is no beach in this place to get down, the turquoise blue water of the bay is surrounded by high cliffs and is really a beautiful place to be in. The mouth of the bay is shallow and may not be passable during the low tide. Thankfully, the tide favored us to pass through the waters and we could get a good view of the bay. After a trip around the bay area, we were on our way.

Finally the boat approached the Maya Bay. The approach was greeted by “wow” and “ohh” expressions from our fellow travelers. I went to the front of the speedboatto click some photographs. The place still looks magical just the way it was 5 yrs back. The only issue you may have is the crowd that it pulls every day. But apart from that, this is the beach to be in! We got down at the beach and our tour guide led us towards the inner island. There was a trail and it was marked for Losama Bay. After a 5min walk, we reached the Losama bay. Keep in mind that from here, you can just view the bay from a height. It looks good, the usual turquoise blue water, but personally, I liked the Piley Bay better as it was much bigger.

We walked back to the Maya Bay and sat down by the beach. The sun was now slowly going below the high cliffs by the side and the tide was going low. Our speedboat got caught in the low tide but was successfully towed deeper into the bay by other speedboats. But that meant that we had  to now walk a longer path in water to get to our boat. We got back into our speedboat which then took us back to the mainland in Krabi.

berT & Sarah
24.01.2016
Location: Krabi, Thailand