5-5 Ao Nang Pier

 We have been contemplating doing some kind of boat trip for photography.  There are a million little stands that sell these tours.  The most common is taking a long-tailed boat.  We had a lot of question about how you would get on or off the boat.  I had done some reading of blogs etc of people who had gone on them.  There was some discussion of how difficult it would be for some one who is somewhat physically challenged to get on or off.  Many of these discussion said it would not be a good idea.

There are no long-tailed boats taking off from the beaches nearest us - so we took a Grab taxi to the pier which was too far to walk to from our house.  We could see from the pier that the beach was covered with these boats - many of them now no longer in the water as it was low tide.  

The beach where we got dropped off - near the pier.

Long-tailed boat no longer in the water.

So many boats - all crammed together. 

The boats are all rubbing against each other.  We watched one boater squeeze his way into a row of boats by nudging boats on either side to move down.  No one seemed to be bothered by it.

You can take speed boat rides as well.

The cliffs are a pretty backdrop to the scene.

We watched as people got off the second boat from the bottom.  A small ladder was attached to the other side of the boat.  People had to straddle the side of the boat, pull themselves over and face the boat.  The ladder did not go all the way down so people had to jump into the water and wade a few steps to shore.  My back screamed at me just watching them disembark,

We decided we could take photos with our feet firmly planted on the ground!