Where limestone rises from the sea

The day yachts out of Phuket reach James Bond Island by mid morning, several hundred visitors at a time, and every one of them is gone by five. A yacht keeps different hours. Anchor in Phang Nga Bay overnight, take the karsts at first light when the water is green glass and the only sound is birdsong falling off the cliffs, and be somewhere else entirely before the first longtail of the day arrives.

The Andaman in short

Phuket is the base, with full-service marinas on its sheltered east coast and an international airport connected through Singapore, Bangkok and the Gulf hubs. From there everything is close. Phang Nga Bay opens to the north-east, shallow and protected in almost any weather. Krabi and the Railay peninsula lie across the water to the east, and Railay's climbing cliffs are reachable only by yacht, which keeps the place feeling like an island. The Phi Phi group sits a morning's cruise to the south-east, the Similans wait offshore to the north-west, and the supporting cast ashore, provisioning, spas, golf, restaurants worth a detour, runs deeper than anywhere else in Asia.

Where to point the bow

Phang Nga's limestone towers hide hongs, collapsed sea caves open to the sky. At the right state of tide the tender slips under a cliff and emerges inside a roofless room of jungle, birdsong and vertical rock, and there is nothing else in yachting quite like it. Ko Panyi is a fishing village built entirely on stilts against a karst wall, and lunch there is better than it has any right to be. Idle the tender through the mangrove channels north of the village and sea eagles patrol overhead. Maya Bay on Phi Phi Leh, closed for years so its corals could recover, now admits visitors on strict terms, which has returned some of its silence, and an evening anchored off Phi Phi Don watching the cliffs go copper is the better memory anyway. The Similan Islands, a national park open from roughly mid October to mid May, offer granite boulder reefs and the clearest water in Thailand, with whale sharks and manta rays possible around Ko Bon and Ko Tachai at the height of the season. Further south, Ko Rok and Ko Haa have the best snorkelling outside the Similans, and Racha Noi makes the natural swim stop on the run home to Phuket.

You take the bay at dawn, and by the time the day fleet arrives you are already somewhere better.

Ashore: Phuket Old Town after dark

Phuket Old Town is the surprise, streets of Sino-Portuguese shophouses built on tin-mining money and repainted in ice-cream colours, now filled with noodle shops and coffee roasters. Order moo hong, the island's own braised pork belly with garlic and pepper, and southern curries that arrive hotter than anything in Bangkok. The street food is good enough that the Michelin Guide now patrols it, and the Sunday walking-street market on Thalang Road is the easiest way in. Up on Nakkerd Hill the Big Buddha watches the whole island, and Wat Chalong remains its spiritual heart. Return a wai when offered, keep shoulders covered in temples, and you will find that Thai hospitality is not a slogan but a habit.

When to come

The season is November to April, when the north-east monsoon dries the air and flattens the Andaman, and the water holds around twenty-eight degrees in any month. December to February is the glassy peak, and it books early. Songkran, the Thai new year in mid April, is worth planning around if you like your festivals joyful and wet. From May to October the south-west monsoon brings rain in bursts, closed marine parks and swell on west-facing coasts, at which point the Gulf side of Thailand, Koh Samui and the forty-two islands of the Ang Thong Marine Park, becomes the sensible alternative. To match the season to a route, ask our charter team.