Prachuap Life

Dan Singkhon Guide: The Border Market, Singkhon Pass and Thailand's Narrowest Point Drive west out of Prachuap town, away from the bay, and the country runs out surprisingly fast. The road climbs gently through Khlong Wan, past pineapple fields and palm groves, into the foothills of the Tenasserim range — and then, barely a quarter of an hour after you left the sea, you are looking at a white checkpoint arch with Thai flags on top and another country on the other side of it. This is Dan Singkhon, the Singkhon Pass border point with Myanmar, sitting close to the narrowest waist of Thailand. It is part border market, part geography lesson, part quiet hill town outing, and it is the one Prachuap day trip that has nothing to do with a beach. Most visitors never make it here, which is understandable and a pity in equal measure. Prachuap sells itself on bays and beaches, and a land border with Myanmar sounds, on paper, like an errand rather than an excursion. In practice the run west...

Waghor Science Park Guide: The Eclipse Beach, Waghor Aquarium and the King Who Read the Sun Twelve kilometres south of Prachuap town, past the air base beach and the fishing village of Khlong Wan, the coast road reaches a flat, pine-shaded shore that looks like nothing much at all — and is, quietly, one of the most important places in Thai history. This is Wa Ko, spelled Waghor on most signs, a village beach in Tambon Khlong Wan. On 18 August 1868 a king of Siam stood on this sand with telescopes, foreign governors and a small army of scientists, and watched the sun go out at the exact minute he had calculated two years before. The King Mongkut Memorial Park of Science and Technology at Waghor — part memorial, part science museum, part aquarium, part beach park — stands on that ground today, and it is the most under-visited worthwhile half-day in the whole Prachuap coast. Most visitors to Prachuap never get here. They climb Mirror Mountain, swim at Ao Manao, eat at the night market...

Ao Noi Guide: The Fishing Bay North of Prachuap Town, Wat Ao Noi's Teak Hall and the Reclining Buddha Cave Prachuap Khiri Khan likes to call itself the City of Three Bays — Mueang Sam Ao — and most visitors meet two of them without trying. Ao Prachuap is the town bay itself, curving past the seafront road and the pier. Ao Manao is the famous one to the south, inside the Wing 5 air base. The third bay, the northernmost of the three, is the one people miss: Ao Noi, a fishing bay a short ride north of town, where the road runs out past a working village to a teak temple at the foot of a limestone hill and a cave full of reclining Buddhas above it. If Ao Manao is Prachuap's beach day, Ao Noi is Prachuap's quiet morning — and for a lot of us, it is the better half-day of the two. That is because Ao Noi was never built for visitors. This is a bay where larger fishing boats dock and unload, where a village lives from the catch, and where the main sights — Wat Ao Noi and Tham P...