Jarrod and Sara’s Site

Well, we’re leaving this afternoon to head back to Bangkok to get ready for our long flight home. Southern Thailand has proved to be an excellent place to spend our last few weeks after traveling non-stop for 2+ months. We were occasionally worried before we arrived as we’d heard various reports of both how great the beaches were and how over developed and crowded it had become. We loved it. I could see people who had come here 10 years ago and then came back, not liking what had changed, but there are so many places and options, if you cannot find a good time here, you’re pretty jaded. We spent the last 7 nights on two islands that had anything you could have wanted: big resorts and crowded, yet beautiful, beaches with beach bars and restaurants and massages on the beach as far as the eye could see, and on the same island, small bays with even more beautiful beaches that we shared with maybe 5 to 10 people. It was a perfect mix.

We spent 6 of the 7 nights on the island of Ko Lanta, which is a good sized island (40 minute drive from the furthest point north to the furthest point south), that is home to, as I mentioned above, almost any type of beach atmosphere you could want. We chose to stay in Khlong Jak Bay almost at the southern tip of the island in the less developed area. After making your way south on a paved road, the road suddenly turns into a crazy dirt/powder/sand pit with huge and plentiful bumps and very steep hills. This portion of the road is about a mile long and is great because it keeps this area from getting too built up (which will change soon I’m sure). At the bay we stayed in, there was one fancy, but small, resort, and two simple bungalow operations that had rooms, a restaurant, and access to the beach. We loved the place we stayed as it had a friendly, laid back staff of thai kids, clean, comfortable rooms, a nice open air beachfront restaurant (choose to be in the shade or have a table in the sand on the beach), and a beautiful beach (no rocks, clean, clear, deep, blue water, perfect for swimming). This was like Ko Jum in that there isn’t a lot to say about what we did…. we went to the beach…. all day, everyday, and I couldn’t imagine it would be possible to be more relaxed without passing out.

One day we walked into the national park area and enjoyed stunning views of the cliff-lined coast, really nice, lush, rainforest, and a few troops of resident monkeys. The monkeys were cool to see, but they are not nearly as innocent as they look. One one trip, we got off the motorbike for about 2 minutes, to take a picture or something, and though we were standing 10 feet away we didn’t notice one little punk hop onto the bike and start sorting through my backpack. When we saw it, it was trying to bite into one of the pockets. I ran over and shooed it off as Sara laughed and snapped photos (she found it more amusing than I did). Other than that excursion, we took a motorbike and went the length of the island to check out all the beaches and concluded that ours was our favorite anyway, so we stopped and had an awesome lunch at this collection of bamboo huts on top of a cliff overlooking a beautiful, empty beach. It was the simplest place but the setting was so ridiculous. I think we had grilled shrimp, papaya salad, and two pineapple shakes, it was delicious and probably cost $6. Apart from riding the glorified moped on incredibly treacherous hilly, dirt roads, where it didn’t belong, we loved cruising the rest of the beautiful coastline of the island on a bike, so fun and relaxing.

The one excursion we took was a great one. We booked a snorkeling trip to the tiny, uninhabited, marine reserve island of Ko Rok (unfortunately we had no money left to dive). Most people take this as a day trip, but we learned that you could rent a tent on the island and that almost no one did. The girl at our guesthouse explained that people on vacation don’t like to sleep in tents, which is probably right, but it was really perfect for us because we were 2 of the 5 people who were camping on this island overnight. After spending the day with the day trip group doing some really nice snorkeling in the type of place that you see on postcards, we went ashore to have a big buffet lunch with the group. After lunch, all the people and boats left, and we were alone on a ridiculously beautiful beach, there was not a single other person on it (don’t know where the other 3 people were, and there was a group of national park employees at the camp ground a little ways from the beach. We couldn’t believe it. We stayed on the beach by ourselves the entire afternoon and had a great time.

We fully expected and looked forward to a quiet night by ourselves on this deserted island… it didn’t quite work out that way. Just before dark one of the park employees came over and invited us to come party with them as it was another of the employee’s birthdays. We debated this a little as we weren’t really looking for a party night, but the “restaurant” where we were going to get dinner was where they were hanging out and it was the birthday girl who worked in this “restaurant” (a few picnic tables seemingly opened for the 5 people camping here), so we decided to check it out for a while. It started as one of the most awkward experiences we’ve had… and continued that way, but turned into an awesome time. When we arrived they had just started eating and insisted we join them on a huge picnic table where they had spicy, glass noodle salad, small, whole grilled fish, and some kind of squid soup with a black broth that was mildly frightening. We felt super awkward because there were about 12 of them, and only about 4 spoke a little English, and we didn’t want to eat too much or too little and didn’t really know the etiquette. This was quickly resolved however as they were all our age and in full party mode, drinking lots of beer and whiskey, and basically kept shoving food onto our plates and watching to see if we thought things were too spicy. After we got more comfortable with them it was a blast, but the first 10 or 15 minutes we felt like aliens being observed while we ate, but they were super friendly about it. Just when we thought dinner was over, we were surprised to see them carrying in a huge (3 foot long) grilled barracuda wrapped in tin foil that had been cooking this whole time. We learned that this was the main course. Everyone basically just took turns eating portions directly off the fish and dunking it in a really spicy chili sauce. It was heavenly. After dinner the dancing started and the drinking continued… and they wouldn’t let us put our beer down without forcing a fresh one on us (they were really twisting my arm). Sara got a surprise when she took a sip of her Heineken and realized that it had been diluted with Thai whiskey, her face was priceless. This is apparently a common mix here and it was actually pretty good. After the initial awkwardness, we found it to be just like a small party at home (a drunken, rowdy one) where everyone was laughing, dancing around like idiots, and singing horribly. We were able to communicate pretty well after a while and I even taught them some American dance moves. It was a blast and an interesting experience we definitely won’t forget.

Well that’s about it for the islands. They were a great place to spend time and we’d recommend them to anyone. We’ll be home in about 2 days, we can’t believe it. Its been such a great trip but we’re really excited to be coming home. We’ll probably write one more of these when we get into New York or back home to wrap it up. Can’t wait to see everyone!

Jarrod and Sara