Ao Nang is the centre of tourism in Krabi. You can buy almost anything and eat almost everything at this beach front. There are hundreds of shops selling tour packages, airline tickets, suits, souvenirs etc. Name it, you can buy it here !
But what i liked about Ao Nang is how organised the beach is. Unlike Patong in Phuket, which is a chaos. Ao Nang even have benches along the sidewalk for people to sit down and just enjoy the atmosphere. Unlike Patong, the vendors dont harass the tourists. A couple of time, i purposely browsed through the contents in a shop and they did not at any time force me to buy anything.
The best thing i liked about Ao Nang is the parking system. Unlike Patong in Phuket, they dont allow cars to park on either side of the road. There are no tuktuk's lines up along the street. Very organised and i think Patong should take a trip to Ao Nang to learn from small sister. Overall i liked Ao Nang very much.
The beach is quite clean and seemed very popular during the day. Again, there is nobody selling the tourists tanning decks or disturbing them with products. I should say, my view about Krabi changed, just by comparing Ao Nang with Patong. No wonder more and more tourists are switching to Krabi instead of Phuket.
Ao Nang is also the best place to go island hopping around the Andaman sea. It is well positioned to cover all the major islands.
Few kilometers away from Ao Nang beach is the Noppharat Thara Beach, which is very long. The sand though is not as nice as Ao Nang.
