Laem Singh

You smell Laem Singh before you see it — the trail down from the parking area off the Kamala–Surin road cuts through thick jungle, hot and green and loud with cicadas, and then it just opens onto this small crescent of a cove that feels engineered by someone with good taste. Fifteen, twenty minutes of scrambling down a steep dirt path, roots for handholds in places, and it dumps you onto sand tucked between two rocky headlands like the beach is hiding from the road on purpose.

We went on a whim, following a tip from the guy who ran our guesthouse in Kamala, who said something like “small beach, no bars, you’ll like it” and left it at that. He was right. There’s a viewpoint at the top of the trail where tour buses stop for photos, and most of those people never actually go down — which means once you’re on the sand, the crowd thins to almost nothing, especially before ten in the morning. We had maybe a third of the cove to ourselves for a good hour.

The water is the reason people bother with the climb. It’s genuinely calmer and clearer than the open beaches nearby because the headlands block most of the swell, and close to the rocks on the northern end there’s enough coral and fish life that we snorkeled for almost an hour without needing a boat trip to get there. Lia found a school of small silver fish that kept circling her ankles like they were curious, and I floated on my back looking up at the cliff line, thinking this was closer to what I’d imagined Thailand looking like before I ever got here.

There’s no real infrastructure — a couple of guys renting kayaks and selling coconuts from a cooler, no restaurant, no shade beyond what a few overhanging trees offer near the rocks. Bring water, bring your own lunch if you’re staying past noon, because there’s genuinely nothing else down there. The climb back up in full afternoon heat is the price you pay, and by the top we were both drenched and a little annoyed at ourselves for not leaving earlier. Worth it anyway.

When to go: Early morning, ideally before 9am, to beat the tour groups and the worst of the heat on the trail; November to April for the calmest, clearest water for snorkeling.