Day 18

My sunburnt shoulders and back were healing but were a horrible peeling mess. So a t-shirt for today’s outing! An early start for a tour pickup. In classic Thai fashion one hour later the mini-bus finally arrived and we drove at hair-raising speed along to the south coast, stopping at resorts to collect people. The posh resorts employ death-defying guards whose job is to run into the constant melee of traffic with a stop sign so that vehicles can enter and leave the resorts – otherwise they are stuck waiting for hours. As you see motorbikes and pickup trucks veering around them I wonder how many get flattened. To get a sense of the madness of Samui’s roads get this: I read Thailand has the highest road accident rate in the world, and in Thailand Koh Samui has the highest accident rating of all! There’s always people doing crazy overtaking, farangs riding around on bikes for the first time, people pulling out of nowhere, vehicles on the wrong side of the road, animals in the road, you name it – and because the roads are good everyone is going fast.

At the docks we got onto a big “slow boat”. Speedboat tours cost over double. The travel agent had recommended this company over another one which seemed exactly the same because of they had a nice new boat. Well, if it exists, this wasn’t it. This ship was falling apart. It was about 500 years old but had a certain rusty charm to it I suppose. Aside from me there were very few people alone on board, most were couples of all ages and nationalities, with a few families and groups of friends thrown in.

Hello, I’m new apparently

We headed out for over an hour towards the park. Our jolly guide showed us the options available when we arrived. I asked him about the climb to the viewpoint the Brits had warned me about. “You’ll be ok, just be careful”. No kayaking for me of course! As we approached the green islands came out of the haze. I read this was one of the places for the inspiration for the novel and film “The Beach” and you can see why. Real paradise islands covered in hilly jungle with little strips of white sand and limestone cliffs and formations rising off them. Very cool.

We landed on this beach

We pulled into the big island where the park headquarters are and got on a longboat to the beach. You can stay in bungalows here, I’d love to do that sometime but it’s too pricey for solo travel. A few other big boats were moored offshore and the island was quite busy. I began the climb up the jungle path to the viewpoint. It was hard going and immediately got quite steep with natural steps between roots and jagged rocks, some smooth from many feet over the years. In the wet this would be lethal but the weather was true to the forecast, a bit cloudy and strong sun. I had got lucky!

The jungle climb

By 200m up the going was steep and I wished I’d brought more water. There was a rope by this point to help with the climb. The viewpoints at 100 and 200m were impressive but I just stopped to look quickly and pressed on to the top, we didn’t have much time. I was encouraging a German woman who was with me who was on the verge of giving up – promising her the view would be worth it!

The last section was as extreme as I’d heard. A steep climb over a diagonal slope of jagged grey rock with no path and a rope to help.With one arm and my heavy camera shoulder bag this was quite a challenge but slowly and surely, with the help of the rope, I climbed my way up. A little wooden platform is just below the summit and the view is amazing as you can see! Photos with the tripod I’d lugged up were almost impossible as anyone moving on the platform vibrated the whole thing. Well, sharp photos or not the view was worth the climb. Quite a few people gave me kudos for doing it one-armed!

A very treacherous climb…

…but this is the reward!

The descent was very slow going and much harder than the climb. I got there in the end and saw some monkeys on the way down with a baby. They didn’t move to anywhere easy to photograph. I discovered a small scratch on my big zoom, probably from sand. Damn, that will come up in every photo with that lens now.

Amazingly I wasn’t the last back and the other stragglers arrived to get a longboat back to the big boat. When the guide’s assistant told him I’d gone to the top the guide was laughing at me. “I thought you meant you go to the 100m viewpoint, not 500m! You are climbing up there with one arm – good man! Haha!”. We had an epic lunch on board and I chatted to some 50ish Aussie chaps who, when I told them of my plans for scoping out Oz for emigration, warned me that they reckon Oz working hours and conditions will go down the pan soon, along with the economy. The cost of living there has reached untenable levels, one of them explained. I guess I’ll have to see how things are in a year or two.

We puttered through the scenic islands through turquoise water, next stop was a paradise bay with a path up from the beach to a lagoon. By “path” I mean the steepest steps known to mankind. If you don’t hold the rail you are mental as one foot between those steps would be a broken leg, and one slip a broken neck! The lagoon is awesome though, well worth the climb once again. You descend the other side to get to the surface and you can see fish from a platform above. No swimming allowed although you are dying to jump into that turquoise water after that hot climb!

The lagoon

Back at the beach you can snorkel and swim, but I couldn’t be bothered, Koh Tao has the best snorkelling. Chatted to a young travelling couple who studied in Oxford and turned out they were heading to my next planned destination around the same time as me, KhaoSok national park. Maybe I’d run into them again some day around there, unfortunately I didn’t get to catch them again before the end to exchange email addresses. Whilst we waited for the kayakers to return, people could dive off the boat and swim in the lovely turquoise waters.

As the sun got low we headed for home. The trip back was awesome as clouds came down over the islands and the sun shone through making god rays. The deck was warm and most people came up top to sunbathe and watch the islands getting smaller. I put on my favourite liquid drum and bass tunes, sat back and felt probably the best I have since I started these travels!

Approaching Samui

Goodbye, Ang Thong. I’ll be back one day!

Day 17

It was time to leave Koh Tao for Koh Samui. I wanted to go to the national park there tomorrow, the only dry day on the forecast. I hid in the frog restaurant from the rain in the morning (the frogs were making a poor effort in the day), using the wi-fi to plan. In the afternoon I got a pickup taxi to the main town and sheltered in a café nomming on breadsticks and lattes until the Lomprayahcatamaran at 3pm. I piled on with a full load of passengers and sat up on the open top deck, as the rain god had taken a break.

Leaving Koh Tao

Koh Tao was covered in cloud as we left and the wind batteredus out at sea. The sea was choppy. My poncho was flapping around like a whip making a horrendous racket. The views were impressive and moody with dark clouds in every direction. To the west you could make out a cluster of small islands in the distance, the Ang Thong marine park I wanted to visit. The big forested lump of KohPangyanwas ahead (the Full Moon party island). We passed other ferries and fishing boats. I put on my iPod, leaned back and enjoyed the atmosphere, I like boat travel!

Bye, Koh Tao

Quality

We stopped at Koh Pangyan to transfer passengers and two drunk brothers came up on deck with bongo drums and beer. They were terrible at drumming but pretty funny. They had a rubber chicken which squarked which sounded ridiculous with the drums, but made us all laugh. They were pelting out on the bongos and sometimes one of them would stand up with his arms out like he was flying or a really ugly Kate Winslet. They stuck the chicken on one of the antennae and the ship honked at them in protest – there was a CCTV camera! They shook the chicken around in front of the camera for revenge, haha!

That hat RIP

The funniest moment was when a big gust of wind in an instant blew one of the guy’s hats clean off – it whipped into the distance behind the boat never to be seen again! It was even better because it had happened earlier but hit the floor, and the guy never learned his lesson. He whispered to the chicken and mimed throwing it into the sea to fetch it!

KohSamui, the largest of the three islands, dominated the view as we approached. It’s over 100km around the edge. We got off and I walked past rows and rows of transfer mini-buses, but it’s cheaper to get away from the pier and find your own transport. I didn’t really know where to go but followed the mini-buses driving out and after a long walk with all my kit, and some amazing internal compass skills (i.e. head inland) I hit the main road going around the island. I waited for a songthaew to come along. Songthaews are pick-up trucks with a roofed back, a bench running on each side. People hop on and off and you arrange with the driver what to pay when you get on. You ring a buzzer or bash the side when you want to get off. With the public ones you can sometimes just jump on without speaking to the driver and pay a flat fare.

Eventually one turned up and I got the driver to take me to a guest house I’d read about a few miles away. We drove along a very busy road past a never-ending stream of buildings and concrete, mostly geared for tourism. Resorts, restaurants, spas, travel agents, hire shops. Samui was super-developed compared to Koh Tao and this view of it was ugly. There were lots of coconut plantations too and jungle hills rose inland, but no coastline was visible from the road. We arrived but where he’d dropped me wasn’t the place I had asked for. So I walked up and down the road for ages looking for the place, I knew I was in the right area.  When you walk by the roads in Samui you are always waving away or ignoring lots of normal taxis, songthaews and motorbike taxis on the way, who honk at you or shout “Where you going?”. But you can’t afford to get taxis everywhere when on a budget!

As I passed a bar a Thai woman asked where I was going and, as she wasn’t driving anything, I replied. She spoke to an aging Aussie who turned out to be the owner. Hevery kindly got his Thai lady friend to phone the guest house I was looking for, to find out where it was. Annoyingly it transpired the songthaew had dropped me at the right place – but the resort had changed name and gone upmarket!Gah! I bought a drink from the bar and thanked my helpers- then wandered the road for ages looking at different resorts, trying to find something I could afford. It was almost dark when I gave up,I couldn’t lug my stuff around any more so I settled for a cheaper place by the beach and haggled to get a multiple night discount. This room was a luxury compared to my recent accommodation. Hot shower, air-con, wardrobe, free shampoo, free wi-fi, a fridge, free water, and with the ultimate selling point – the Towels of Love!

As it got dark I went to the beach which stretched for miles, with coarse sand (and not much of it as the tide was in). There were resorts all the beach edge, though most only had about 20 meters of sand with the lodgings in rows perpendicular to the sea. You could see planes coming in to land at Samui airport. I walked the main road looking for food, passing hostess bars with girls shouting out at me, shops, resorts and restaurants. Found popular cheap place and had a dry curry which played havoc with my stomach that night! I also discovered my credit card had stopped me from withdrawing cash. Doh. But for some reason it worked at a travel agents when I boughta tour of the marine park for tomorrow. I had to call the bank and it turns out their credit card specifically designed for world travel still needs to be activated for world travel. Never assume!

Day 16

Had the best sleep for weeks on the surprisingly soft bed in the beach hut. In Thailand they seem to like their beds and their women hard (one bit of that might be made up). The weather forecast had been wrong. It was cloudy and warm, not a lightning storm! I went snorkelling in the morning, swimming right out into the bay before the big boats arrived. I ran into a lot of really big schools of fish, many different kinds and bigger fish than usual, which was cool. I saw the big corals that the divers go down to see too

Wows

Mmmph mmph mmmmmmphh mmmphhhh mmmmph!

Then I rested on the beach and could feel the sun trying to burn me even through the clouds. The beach was busier today, everyone spread in a big line on the white sand.Over lunch the skies darkened and the rains descended. My plan was to snorkel again but when I went to get my gear in my hut I lay down for a minute and fell asleep for 4 hours! Woke up at 5pm feeling very groggy. My sleep pattern is so messed up with all the travelling and shoulder problems.

I had dinner at the frog restaurant again and found them this time, fat toads in the artificial pools, with big air sacs to make all that hubbub. The light from the torch made them stop croaking so much.The swelling in my arm had all but gone today. No amputation needed, fingers and arms crossed!