Ao Nang www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Both beautiful and bland all in one yawny breath.  As long as you face west, this place is as stunning as any other of the exquisite beaches of Thailand that line its coasts.  On bright days the sea is calm and a colour chart of warm green to deep blue, lime stone islands are dotted across the horizon and long tail boats bounce along the surface of the ocean, spraying a white tail behind them.  Turn around though and you have a watered down version of Khao San Road, catering for families, men looking for Thai love longer than one night, and package holiday makers.  

A road runs along the side of the beach, elevated from the shore.  On the other side of the road from the beach are restaurants, at present desperate for custom, each one along a baht less for a pizza, or an extra percent off the menu, what with it being the beginning of low season.  There are countless souvenir shops, 7-11’s, massage parlours, hair braiding, travel agents and T-shirt shops, blah, blah, blah.  The depravity of Khao San Road is not here, but its essence is.  The wrist bands with obnoxious messages have gone, but the t-shirts aren’t much better.  Most extolling the virtues of women with their legs spread.  

(Ahhh, yawn, I am almost too bored to write any more about the place.  Did I mention it was bland?)  

The road curves up away from the beach, to be over looked by an imposing limestone monolith, making the banality of the activity below all the more apparent.  Further up the road are more of the same, Irish bars, Reggae bars, Girly bars and more massage.  

However, to be fair to the place, although it is bland, in the blandest sense of the word, it is very clean – not that that should be the selling point of a place.  Oh, it’s clean.  A hospital is clean, but who wants to holiday in a hospital.  And there is a lot of green.  Again, not exactly a selling point given that crocodiles are green, and, again, no one wants to holiday in a crocodile.   Trees have been planted every couple of metres along the road.   Tiles have been inlaid into the pavements to make them look more interesting, in a bland kind of way.  There are curved benches, and snaking low walls that all show a bit of thought in the design of the place.    

Oh my life, I can’t be bothered to talk about the place any more….it’s too…..bland?  Oh, but there are the sunsets......

Copyright notice

The content on this website is copyright of Wendy King - © Wendy King 2012 All rights reserved.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

·         you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only

·         you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material

You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com