Searching Railay’s Bat Cave and Secret Lagoon

As an avid traveler, I’m always looking for fun adventures and activities to experience when visiting a new place, and Krabi was no exception. I was super excited to be in Thailand and Krabi sounded like the perfect place to rest and recover yet have plenty of active things to do as well. I had researched a bit previously and had compiled a list that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through. I used the list as a guideline to select options depending on weather and energy levels.

Upon arriving at Railay, Krabi, my friend and I decided to locate Bat Cave, which we’d come across online and seen in photos. The impressive cave is shaped like a giant egg that opens up to a view of the water and islands beyond. When you look at a map, Railay isn’t a large area to explore. You can walk from one side to the other in five minutes, so you’d think it would be easy to find, right? However, finding the cave proved to be quite a challenge. Why may you ask?

On our first day, we set out after dinner to find the cave for a sunset view. However, we faced a problem, or a few rather, the first of which was the GPS which looked simple enough until it led us to the end of West Railay Beach, where there was no trail but the map said to keep walking through the mountain. That end however was right next to a resort (with signs saying private property so that was fun), and we asked for directions where we were informed to “go straight and turn right.” Simple, yes? However we weren’t sure which was right so after getting to the first path we asked again (or rather I sent my friend up to ask again since she was more outgoing than me haha) and were informed that “yes, turn here. Keep going straight and turn right.”
But as we started walking down we realized we were in another hotel complex. An employee was driving a golf cart and saw us walking and took pity on us probably looking so lost because he picked us up and brought us to the other side and told us to walk down the beach and turn right. Which made us laugh at the same directions we’d heard all evening. By this point, it was already dark and we finally found a hiking trail but it was too steep to do at night so we decided that we would do it in the morning since we finally knew where the trail was and could get to it much faster and easier.

Come morning, after enjoying the hotel’s breakfast and grabbing some water bottles to stay hydrated, we headed out to find the cave. The start of the trail we found was super steep, steep enough that you need to hold on to a rope to safely get up and down (and impossible to climb if the trail is wet since it’s incredibly dangerous). From the signs, blogs, and people we talked to we were under the impression that one trail at the top went to a lagoon and the other went to the cave.

After going through a roundabout loop of a trail that overlooks Railay full of monkeys, we descended toward the lagoon, which was a challenging climb with three very steep sections of rock. (I’ll just put this out there, if you end up going to the lagoon and you’re scared of heights or not good at climbing then don’t do it. It’s not a super safe trail and if you aren’t careful you can seriously get hurt). People we passed on the trail said the cave was down there so we continued slowly. We eventually reached the lagoon and the view was gorgeous. No one was there, so it was super quiet and the water was really clear, and we did find a cave tucked away, but not THE cave we were looking for. So where was this mysterious bat cave? We weren’t sure.

After we got back down we decided to walk over to Phra Nang Beach since it was nearby. It was then we realized at the end of the beach you could follow a trail and it would bring you to the bat cave we had been searching for. So we only needed to go straight down the trail and turn right one more time 😉 haha
Overall, exploring Railay and getting slightly lost was a fun experience (and entertaining since it isn’t a huge area). There were a few trails around the area, but mostly climbing, which was super fun to experience because the views from the top of the climbing walls were breathtaking. I would highly recommend giving it a shot because even though some of the walls have been overclimbed (making the surface slippery) it’s an experience you would be sad to miss.

Location: Here’s a handy dandy map of where we went hehe