Ao Manao, Prachuap Khiri Khan

I have done the drive from Phuket to Nakon Nayok and back again many times now. I have done it in a day but it is a bit crappy driving the car for 12 hours solid so we now always do stopovers. I have visited most of the obvious stopover points on the route but this time on the way back we tried a new place - Ao Manao. What a lovely little gem of a place it turned out to be - I can't believe we have not visited before.

Ao Manao (Lemon Bay) is just south of Prachuap Khiri Khan. We have stayed in Prachuap several times and I have always thought it was a nice little town. It is by the sea but the beach is not particularly good. There are some nice little eating spots along the seafront. There is a big temple overlooking the town from the top of a hill. Around the bottom of the hill are lots of playful monkeys that you can safely feed without getting bit.

At the south end of the beach is a small airforce base and if you drive through it you come to Ao Manao. I was expecting a small bay with maybe a few bungalows around. It is actually a long sweeping beach enclosed by two spectacular headlands with an island out smack in the middle of the sea. It is a beautiful little beach. The sand slopes into the sea very gently and the water was absolutely placid making it perfect for the kids to play.

There is plenty of accommodation and although it is pretty basic, it was ideal for our group which was now up to 8 people as we were carrying two of Pon's friends with us back to Phuket. We got an 8 bed apartment (2 floors, 3 rooms) for 800 baht. There are plenty of eating and drinking places along the beach and the food is good and very reasonably priced.

The whole area is maintained by the Airforce and apparently they occassionally close it the public for airforce functions. However, generally it is open and they are very welcoming. I found the whole area very charming and we will definitely make this place a more regular stopover on our drives to Nakon Nayok.