Continent # 2 Complete

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Well, it's been a little while. We are now on our last day in Asia and tonight we make our journey on toward another continent and more experiences. Anyways, back to what's been going on over the last couple weeks...

We left Ko Pha-Ngan a few days after the full moon party and with thousands of tourists heading to the other islands nearby we decided to quickly get away from them all rather than head to Ko Tao or Ko Samui for more "typical" Thai beach experiences. We took a boat back to the mainland and had a "bus" ticket already bought which turned out to be a van, and this was a van of normal size with 4 rows of seating and no room in the back for luggage. This meant that 14 people were in this van and our bags were under our feet, most incredibly comfortable for me as always. This van trip was heading down to Hat Yai which was only a few hours away so it wasn't all that bad. It was already dark when we stopped at a rest stop for some food and the option of purchasing a wide variety of guns from a stand set up near all the food. We didn't know where we were heading in Hat Yai and we assumed we would just try to get near the bus station and find a place to stay. The bus station is a couple kilometers outside of town and not in a good area, so we luckily learned from a nice girl on our van who spoke english and thai both very well so she told us she had a decent hotel set up for her and her friends and if we wanted we could follow them and she'd set us up a room there too. This we let her do and it worked out nicely because Hat Yai isn't really a tourist town so not much English was spoken by the locals. Hooray for chance meeting #1. We spent the night in Hat Yai at this comfortable hotel which even had hot water for the shower (a luxury for us) and a sink and a mirror so I took the opportunity to shave my whole face and see how beardlessness goes over in comparison (much to the delight of schoolgirls in Bangkok I've learned). The next day we planned to head over to Pak Bara pier and catch a ferry out to Tarutao National Marine Park. We didn't really talk about what time we'd leave though so in the morning Kam was out on the town for a while and Dan and I waited with bags packed for a while before he got back and we started attempting to get out of town. Kam had checked online as to how long of a trip it was to Pak Bara and it was only supposed to be an hour and a half so he got back a couple hours before the ferry left. However, the boat leaves at 2 instead of 2:30 as we though and the hour and a half is only if you go by taxi which is about 4x as expensive as the 2 1/2 - 3 hour mini-bus ride. We had to take about 5 rides around the city in the back of a truck before we got to somewhere we wanted to be that wasn't only offering taxis and we got on a mini-bus expecting to have to spend the night in Pak Bara and then take a ferry the next day out to the islands. We figured that we had missed the last ferry of the day out to the islands so we were about to get off the bus in the town of Pak Bara and look for lodging when chance meeting #2 comes in - a Thai girl told us that she heard a ferry was waiting for a tour group and was going to be making another trip out to the islands that day around 4. This saved us from getting off early and having to spend another night on the mainland as we arrived just in time to transfer our ferry tickets to that day and get on the boat. This girl (see picture) spoke great english due to the fact that she worked in the tourist industry all of her life and even owned and ran a dive company on the best diving island in Thailand until the Tsunami came and destroyed everything she owned, pulled her out to sea, and killed most of her friends. Now she lives in a crappy area near Bangkok and is working as a receptionist in a hotel that specializes in housing Russians, who she says are the least enjoyable tourists to deal with in the world. But anyways, after a couple days of slightly uncomfortable and stressful travel we made it onto the islands we were looking for.

Ko Tarutao is the first main island you come to of Tarutao National Park and it is where we spent our first 3 nights. We rented a tent and a "campsite" for about $6.75 per night and just pitched our tent a few hundred yards down the beach from where anyone else was and we were set up. The island had about 200 people on it over the weekend and down to about 100 I'd guess after the weekend. Most people sleep in the same part of the island in either bungalos, longhouses, or tents, but the island is about 30 km long and 10 km wide so if you head off to see it, you don't see many people at all. There is one cafeteria on the part of the island where we stayed and everyone goes to eat there - not great food, but not too bad. There was a lot of beach and not many people so it was very easy to find a section of beach to hang out on where you had a couple hundred yards with 0 people and only about 5,000 crabs. Every night to the Southwest from our island, there were a few clouds and sheet lightning lighting them up but overhead there were always stars so we got a nice combo at night of lieing on the beach with a starry sky getting lit up by lightning every minute or so.

The first main day we had on Tarutao we decided to do some hiking. About 8 km down the road (part paved, part dirt) from where we were staying was another beach which you could sleep at and which had a cafeteria also and from there a couple trails led up into jungle to some waterfalls. Rather than pay for a truck to drive us down to the start of the trails we figured we could walk down, grab some lunch, then head out to the falls. Upon getting there we found that not enough people were on the island and so that beach was shut down, nobody there and no food to be found. So luckily Dan and Kam had bought some little packs of sugary snack food which sustained us throught he afternoon while we continued hiking. On the hike though we saw a lot of animals. Quite often we would hear things in the jungle and stop to sneak around and try to see what was there. We saw monkeys and a couple monitour lizards (about 3 feet long) on the way down and stopped at a beach for a swim and some more monkey watching. We took the trail to only 1 of the waterfalls though but it was really nice. Much of the hike was along the river which meant a lot of boulder hopping and trying to locate where and on which side of the river the trail picked up again. Good fun. There were also spots along the river which were home to butterflies I guess because often about 20 plain white butterflies would come out and fly all around us and chase each other up and down the river. The waterfall itself was a great little area with the falls dropping into a beautiful, clear pool. There were 2 other people there, but they stayed out of the water so we had the place to ourselves for the most part. We could climb above the falls and find other pools and other smaller falls and you could jump off the ledge near the waterfall which I took advantage of. It was a nice little spot in the jungle and it was great to swim in fresh water for a change but due to hunger and the hope to make the walk all the way back before dark we didn't hang out too long. We made great time boulder hopping on our way back out to the road and half way back to our beach area we came to the other sleeping beach which was in operation so we finally got some food. On that stretch of road though we came across some wild pigs. This was made slightly more interesting by the fact that they had a number of babies with them. Cute, but also can lead to more interesting reactions from wild animals. Apparently they were oblivious to us for quite a while even while they were walking across the road a hundred feet ahead of us because after being in plain sight of us for over a minute, one finally turned and saw us and snorted loudly and they all suddenly dashed off with incredible speed. Good fun.

The island of Ko Tarutao used to be used as a prison island and on the southern part of the island are the old prison grounds which we wanted to visit, but it's a set price for a truck to take you down, and 10 people can ride on the truck but nobody had shown interest so we weren't sure if we would do it. While on the trail the day before we met a guy from San Fransisco and he came and had breakfast with us. He was going to be leaving after breakfast but he had some interest in seeing the prison too so he decided to stay on the island for another day and he had an Italian friend who also stayed an extra day to tag along with us. So the 5 of us got a truck and headed down through the jungle again to the ruins of this old prison area. At it's peak during WWII, Tarutao held about 3,000 prisoners in very cramped living conditions and these living conditions plus the tropical living led to very much disease and uncomfortable life in prison. The prison was shut down after WWII but many people had no way to leave the islands and head back to life on the mainland so many turned to piracy in the waters around southern Thailand and Malaysia. The prison ruins were pretty interesting, they have obviously repaired a lot of floors, walls, and ceilings in the old buildings so it looks a little out of place or unrealistic but was still pretty cool. We got back early enough for some good relaxing on the beach before hiking up to a cliff viewpoint overlooking part of the island and a good view of the sunset, but we didn't get a good sunset that night. Oh well. The next day we hopped on the ferry taking us over to the next island on the list, Ko Adong.

There are 3 main islands in Tarutao that you can sleep on - Ko Tarutao, Ko Adong, and Ko Lipe (Lipe isn't a part of the National Park so it is a little overdeveloped, crowded, and often avoided by eco-tourists). Adong and Lipe are right next to each other so the boat was taking people to both at the same time. Everyone else on the boat was originally heading to Lipe but after talking to us about what we knew of the islands and then seeing the main stretch of beach on Lipe, a 28 year old guy named Derrick from San Fransisco and a middle-aged man from England decided to skip it and head over to Adong with us. Ko Adong is rather similar in basic principles to Ko Tarutao but there were some major differences. Adong had only 1 section of the island which people could sleep on and it was slightly more cramped. There wasn't nearly as much beach area so all tents were set up in the trees next to the beach. This put us much closer to other campers than we were on Ko Tarutao but everyone there was very open and friendly and we all got to know each other after a couple days. There was also a lot of construction going on putting up new buildings, though I'm not sure what they were going to be for. Renting a tent was cheaper on Adong, the food was a little worse, the toilets were all squatters, and the snorkeling was much better. We stayed for a total of 6 nights on Ko Adong which gave us plenty of time.

There was a jungle hike to a waterfall on Ko Adong which we did. The waterfall was not very impressive at all and there were no real pools to swim in, but the jungle area was really cool and we enjoyed climbing up past the waterfall as far along the river as we could make it. There were some nice little falls/slide areas which were good to sit in and let cool, fresh water run over you and just some nice all-around scenery. We spent one full day on a guided boat trip around the islands. This involved 9 of us from Adong sharing a long-tail boat and heading around to a variety of snorkeling/swimming/relaxing locations. There was some great snorkeling with some spots of brightly colored coral, fish of wide variety in very large quantity, and great visibility in the water. We saw all sorts of tropical fish - eels (moray and other), huge pufferfish, and lionfish were the highlights. We stopped on a black rock beach which had a lot of small, shiny black rocks all over which were supposedly cursed if you tried to remove them from the island and we stopped on another island, Ko Rawe, which we were thinking of trying to go camp on. But we found that aside from snorkeling off the main beach, there wasn't really anything to do on Rawe. I've been having some issues with keeping my contacts in for long periods of time so I had to do the last few snorkeling spots with limited vision, but my vision doesn't seem quite so bad underwater as it does above so it wasn't too bad, and it was at the last and less good snorkel spots. Each spot we went we got there when there weren't many people but after we spent a while there a group of about 40 Thai university students would show up. This made things overly crowded but also provided some good entertainment. In general, Thais can't swim and are very afraid of the ocean. This seemed somewhat strange to me, but it is certainly the truth. This meant that all of these students wore huge life-jackets while snorkeling and many held on the life-rings also. Quite a few also got very scared and made some rather amusing scenes while trying to get up the courage to get into the water.

We spent many days lieing around the beach, snorkeling off the shore of Adong, and taking turns in Kam's hammock to nap or read (I'll post the epic reading list at the end of the trip). There was another short but steep hike up to a cliff with some nice views, mainly of the different colors of water around the islands, that we did at seperate times throughout our stay. One day, Daniel and I took a boat over to Ko Lipe to see what it was like, but we went seperately and didn't see each other all day. I headed over with Derrick but we split up when we got there because he wanted to find a place to stay. There was a pretty cool, but entirely unmarked system of trails leading through the interior of Lipe and coming out on different beaches around the edge and since it is a small island and I had nothing in mind to do, I took many of these paths and saw many different beaches. On one of these random beaches I ran into Derrick again and we ended up wandering around some more and then reading/swimming/eating on the main stretch of beach. Although Lipe has a lot of people saying it's overdeveloped and should be avoided, it is really beautiful, crystal clear water, soft white sand, and not all that bad compared to most of Thailand. There are no paved roads on the island, no buildings over 2 stories tall, and no major hotels or resorts of any kind. The food was also much better than on the other islands. I wandered around the island some more, found a shrine on a mountain in the interior, and then started trying to find someone who would drive me back over to Ko Adong which took a little while and got a little worriesome for a bit but worked out just fine. There was an area near a point past the end of the beach we were on in which reef sharks are known to be seen every night so one evening we rented fins to make the swim and headed out looking for sharks. We did not see any at first and Dan and Kam turned back to head back as soon as we got to where they were supposed to be. Dan took off alone and after swimming part way back with Kam I decided I didn't want to give up so quickly so I turned back around and swam back out into shark territory to try again to find them. This turned out to be a mistake (not as bad of a mistake as it could have been) because I didn't find any out in the reefs but Kam ended up seeing 2 as he made the swim back to shore. It was the first time Kam had ever seen a shark so it was good that it was him who got to see them at least.

In general I have been severely dissappointed in the nature and the quality of most backpackers we have met, but just about everyone who headed out to these "non-touristy" and non-party islands were truly good people who were fun to be around and we made a lot of good friends. It was very nice to have this time to relax, enjoy some sun (I'm more tan now than I have ever been in my life, let's see if it lasts). We saw some nice sunsets and I saw one sunrise from the tent and I got up for one on the beach so that was lovely. One night, the nightly lighning was right overhead and then moved on over Ko Lipe and was incredible to sit on the beach and watch the ocean and nearby islands get lit up so brightly. We got some heavy rain on our last night there, but it didn't last for very long. Our tent kept perfectly dry and Kam managed to find shelter during the worst of it then ring out his hammock and still sleep in it.

We left Ko Adong in the morning and had some more long traveling to do. The ferry ride back to shore was about 3 hours then we took a mini-bus back into Hat Yai which was another couple hours then had to wait around for a while for our train to Bangkok. The train was a sleeper train and left at 6:05 pm and arrived in Bangkok at 10:30 am - that's a 16.5 hour train ride. It was a pretty cool experience though. The seats are all just 2 seats facing each other, each one about 1.5x the width of a normal seat. So we start out in those and can order dinner if we want then around 8 o'clock or so they transform the train. Those seats facing each other are folded out and joined together to make a bed and compartments which look just like big overhead luggage storage on airplanes are opened up to reveal a 2nd level of beds. We all had beds in the 2nd level which was rather interesting. The beds had mattresses, pillows, and blankets which were all quite comfortable, but the compartment wasn't nearly long enough for me to lie stretched out in, the train also jerked side to side a lot and was rather noisy. This wasn't too bad though. With the help of my ipod to block out sound I was able to sleep a good amount. And during the times while not trying to sleep, I have to admit that especially compared to the cramped nature of most transportation I've taken, being able to lie down on a bed while being transported is a pretty damn good deal. We've been staying at Lilly's again since we got back into Bangkok and have been taking it pretty easy. Tonight we are going out to dinner and then heading to the airport to catch our flight to Rome. Especially after talking to a lot of people who have been to Italy recently, I am very excited for what is still to come. I hope you are all doing very well back home and I'll write again soon from another part of the world. Take care everyone.

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Photos

Wat Beard?
New found face - 2nd time since high school I've been fully shaved

Thai girl
Who's dive company was washed away by the tsunami and who was pulled out to sea after the 1st wave then washed back up onto shore.

Ko Tarutao Park Headquarters
As seen from a nearby cliff viewpoint

Our home
On Ko Tarutao

Waterfall and pool
In the jungle on Ko Tarutao

Tarzan
That same pool with me about to join the fishes

Monkey
Near the old prison

Attack of the Thais
As a rather large tourist group came to the best snorkeling spot.

Jungle hiking
This was the trail

More Jungle Hiking
Another variety of trail throught he jungle

Ko Lipe
From a distance

Ko Lipe
From much closer

Sunset on Ko Adong
off one side of the island

Sunrise on Ko Adong
From about 500 feet down the beach from the sunset picture

A Bangkok Tuk-Tuk
Not nearly as cool as the Cambodian ones which had 2 seats facing each other in the carriage and the driver had a motorcycle with a trailer hitch pulling it.