South Thailand - where have all the backpackers gone?

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One of the things that travelling teaches you is that your expectations mean nothing, and so it was with the south of Thailand, where my notions of what it would be like turned out to be 10 years out of date. My mental image of beaches full of hale and hearty travellers all sharing tales of travels around the globe proved to be well misfounded. Thailand, even the supposedly 'backpacker' areas, is packed full of people from northern Europe on 2 week holidays. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, except that they all seem a bit zombified (yes, I do remember what effect cold and work has on you) and not particularly interested in meeting and talking about adventures with other travellers. In other words, it was all a bit undynamic and, dare I say it, boring. I was going for 4 or 5 days at a time without having a conversation with anyone, which, after falling into so many easy conversations with other travellers over the past 18 months, came as a bit of a shock. Having headed to Bangkok after the beaches and met up with some other people who were travelling on their own, it seems that they also had the same general experience. Shame that I didn't meet up with them on the beaches and we could have had the general experience together. Due to a lot of luxury resorts now as well, the budget travellers can only afford to stay on the beaches that no one else wants, so lots of rocks in the water or strange squishy seaweed stuff underfoot. Strangely, given that everything in Thailand is so convenient (apart from getting from A to B, which is always more complicated than it needs to be), it was the most difficult 3 weeks of travelling I've had. But anyway, here are some photos to show that it wasn't all bad, and beach wise, I managed to get by! As I had to head back to Bangkok a week before I left Thailand to get my Indian visa, I went to Khao Yai National Park a couple of hours from Bangkok.

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Photos

Ko Rok
An island that a group of us staying in Kantiang Bay visited for the day. Thinking that every beach would be like this in Thailand, I passed up the chance of camping on this uninhabited island. Unfortunately this was the only beach I was on in Thailand that had clear water, possibly because there was quite a few days of rain while I was there, but the visibility in the water here was amazing

Children and fire
the well know entertainment combo. At a guesthouse in Kantiang Bay, they were actually pretty good and obviously knew what they were doing, and part of the family that ran the guesthouse. They were just practising, not doing it for money, so no accusations of child exploitation please!

A monkey ate my bikini
Marauding monkeys came onto my balcony and stole my bikini and sarong. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the one running around with my pants on its head. I was trapped inside my room while all the monkeys pressed their face up against the glass in a Planet of the Apes style zoo situation

Kantiang Bay
The view from the first guesthouse that I stayed in on Ko Lanta which was sociable with friendly staff, I should just have stayed put for a month!

Ko Lanta beach
I don't even know what this beach was called, but I stayed here for 3 nights.

My glamorous lifestyle
Toilet, 'sink' and bare patch next to the toilet where the hermit crabs live. This is what they call 'room with inside bathroom'

Ton Sai
A bit more of a backpacker retreat due to it being a centre of rockclimbing, but still fairly quiet

Pra Nang beach
Very touristy beach you can walk to from Ton Sai, but still very nice despite being busy

Raileh beach
Ton Sai is the next bay round on the far left of the photo, so you could clamber over the rocks and walk back over rocks at low tide in the afternoon.

Ton Sai beach
Not a great swimming beach due to its rockiness, but nice enough

Looking across to Ko Pagnan from Ko Samui
I hadn't planned to go to Ko Samui, but ended up taking a last minute detour as the full moon party on Ko Pagnan was 2 days after full moon and there wasn't any accomodation. I spent a day going round 3 or 4 of the beaches on Ko Samui, which weren't really that amazing, and as expectd, it's really over developed and not very nice

Gecko, Ko Pagnan
A fairly big gecko that lived under the light switches in my bungalow.

Beach at Ban Ta Pan Noi
Where I stayed in Ko Pagnan

Hornbill, Khao Yai national park
Huge birds with a 2 metre wingspan. When you're in the forest, you can hear their wings flapping as they pass overhead

Whip snake, Khao Yai
I got the guide to shove my camera in its face, no way was I doing that

Waterfall from The Beach
In Khao Yai, the one that they jump into in the film. Apparently the water is always brown no matter what time of year, so the colour was 'enhanced' for the film.

The too much eyeshadow type of monkey
In Khao Yai

My best wild elephant shot
This is a wild elephant in the dark, in the trees in Khao Yai. The photo doesn't really replicate the experience of sitting quietly listening to 4 wild elephants munch their way through the vegetation