Rawai Beach is known for its seafood and scenery, but not for its swimming. As with nearby Ao Chalong, this is a beach where forgetting your swimmers is no big deal -- the sand is littered with refuse, too many longtails and the water is anything but crystal clear. Nevertheless, Rawai is still a great place to visit on a daytrip just to treat yourself to a beachside seafood feast.

The length of beach is lined with numerous vendors cooking up fresh seafood storms. Most speak at least a little English and many have limited English menus, but it's easy enough to just point out what you want. Meals are served either on small tables surrounded by recliners or on rattan mats that you can relax on -- all under the shade and well appointed looking out to sea.

With a few cold drinks a seafood meal on Rawai can stretch out to an afternoon and the costs are very reasonable -- but a fraction of what you'd pay on Phuket's far more popular Patong beach. The one pain here is the plague of flies -- lots and lots of flies -- they must like the food too.