Thailand Guide
Southern Thailand: the Gulf coast
Lamai
LAMAI is like a second city to Chaweng's capital, not quite as developed and much less frenetic, while lacking the latter's range of chic hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. Development is concentrated into a toytown of open-air hostess bars and Western restaurants that has grown up behind the centre of the beach, interspersed with supermarkets, dive shops and travel agents. Running roughly north to south for 4km, the white, palm-fringed beach itself is still a picture: it's quite easy to get away from it all by staying at the peaceful extremities of the bay, where the backpackers' resorts are preferable to Chaweng's functional guest houses.
At the northern end, the spur of land that hooks eastward into the sea is perhaps the prettiest spot, though it's beginning to attract some upmarket development: it has more rocks than sand, but the shallow sea behind the coral reef is protected from the high seas of November, December and January.
The original village of Ban Lamai, set well back on Route 4169, remains surprisingly aloof, and its temple contains a small museum of ceramics, agricultural tools and other everyday objects. Most visitors get more of a buzz from Hin Yay (Grandmother Rock) and Hin Ta (Grandfather Rock), small rock formations on the bay's southern promontory, which never fail to raise a giggle with their resemblance to the male and female sexual organs.