A few observations.
Rawai covers a very large area and for those who seek them, has a very large number of bars with 'services' in every corner. It wouldn't surprise me if Rawai didn't have as many BG's in total as Patong. Peter needs to have a drive along Sai Yuan in the evening, past Banana Corner for example. That said, the pier road from Chalong Circle to the Pier has probably 10 or 12 bars that seem to have a surplus of waitresses in relation to their customers.
Yesterday, I drove from Chalong (just north of Rawai) to Takua Pa in Phang Nga (we'd been told that the electric would be off for the whole day so needed an excursion to get away from it). To get to Takua Pa, you go through Khao Lak (it's about 30km north). Took me 2 hours to get to Khao Lak, though I knew exactly the distance as I've cycled there quite a few times (200km round trip). Just a point about the electric, yesterday was a planned outage, and our supply has been great for the 10 years I've been in my house. Khao Lak again is very much a nice place to visit venue, but unless you were running a business, not a place to retire/live.
2 years ago I took a couple of friends to Ko Lanta for a few days. I'd never been, and to be honest I wouldn't be itching to get back there again. Nothing wrong with it from a holiday perspective, good beaches, etc, and Lanta Town was worth a visit. The restaurants like most of these 'stretched' seaside areas, tend to be in clumps around resorts, and the few we tried were on a par with tourist areas in Phuket (Kata, Karon, Surin etc etc), i.e. pretty rubbish compared to the non tourist places on Phuket.
I'm not denigrating Peter's points, but sometimes there needs to be a different perspective offered.