Rawai Beach.

This beach at the south end of Phuket is not very good for swimming. The water is very shallow and the bottom is rocky. At high tide you may be able to start swimming from the shore but it is not advisable. Here you can see a big number of long-tail-boats waiting for you. From here you can go by these boats to Bon Island , Coral Island and to Raya Island - all with good coral reefs and all with restaurants.

Along with the beach barbecued fresh fish and fruit can be bought to low prices. You pay 15 Bath (= 0.4 US $) for one barbecued fish (looks like mackerel but not that rich) plus a small bag with soy sauce and spice. To this you buy some rice and a singha and you got a really cheap lunch or dinner in a beautiful surrounding.

Left: Barbecued mackerel. Right: Serving mother and daughter.

And here some guests well protected against a heavy rain.

In Rawai there is a temple, where the monks are running a school - Wat Sawang Arom School. The monks take care of 150 children, who were affected by the tsunami. Among these children 50 are sea gypsies. Temple School. 

This year (2007) a 150 meters long landing has been built out from Rawai Beach. Now it is possible to start a boat trip from here at low tide as well as at high tide. Moreover, now it is easy to get into the water for a swim:

One day in the hot sun I went out on the pier to get a chilling swim and passed the two fisher men Manun and Lon:

So far they had not got any fish so I said to them 'chok di' which means 'good luck' and continued out on the pier. After half an hour I returned and found that they had got a polysterene box full of fish type 'spotted halfbeak':

It is a lively cylindric fish about 35 cm long:

Manun and Lon thought their luck was caused by me, so they gave me four fishes, which I brought to the Eightfold Restaurant in Kata, where they fried it with garlic and pepper. Delicious!

The old banjan tree seems, however, got hurt. I hope it will recover:

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