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Published: March 14th 2009
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I was excited to be spending a whole day of doing nothing today. Matt had agreed to go on a trip with a few other people as he was keen to see some caves on the island, but to be honest, I was just so pleased to be in such a pretty spot that I didn’t want to leave. I was also secretly looking forward to a bit of time on my own to give me a chance to think about my plan for when I get home.
Breakfast was the best we’d had so far in Thailand and maybe on the whole trip. It was a big buffet with everything you could want - bacon, pancakes, croissants, toast, rolls, freshly made omelettes - everything. We ate for a very long time making the most of filling ourselves up so that we wouldn’t need to have lunch.
After breakfast Matt went to join a group of people for a tour of the Emerald Caves. After lots of confusion about who was going and how much it was all costing, only two of them ended up going in the end.
I left them pleased that I was going to
have some time to chill out by the pool on my own. The pool was next to the beach, with views out across to the other islands in the distance. I sat under an umbrella and spent an amazing morning laying, reading and doing some writing, in between taking dips in the ice cold pool.
After a while I ambled up the beach, enjoying the feeling of stepping in the softest sand ever and watching the white crabs scurrying to their holes as I approached.
After a paddle I moved on to our deck and sat looking out at the water until Matt appeared.
He'd had a good morning at the small beach that was accessed by a swim through a cave, however, he had a feeling he'd been stiched up on the price of the tour.
It turned out he had. The trip was already expensive considering it was only short, and it was one that could be done from other islands we were visiting where it was likely to have been much cheaper. It was a long story but as people dropped out it should have pushed up the cost for Matt and the
other guy, but the other guy said to Matt that he'd done some negotiating with the staff and got the price reduced again. After the tour when Matt asked him what price he'd agreed he became vague and wasn't really interested.
That afternoon Reception tried to get Matt to sign to say he'd pay the higher price for it. It was only £6 more but it was the principle that mattered. The language barrier made arguing all the more difficult! Eventually we persuded them to talk to the other guy to find out his version of events.
After all of the confusion was finally cleared up Matt told me that the trip had been good, short as it was. The long tail had taken them to one of the caves and they’d swum through it with a guide who had a torch. It was 80m long and part of the time it was in complete darkness. Once through the cave they appeared in an enclosed lagoon with a pretty white sandy beach. They had enough time for a bit of a swim and to take some photos before it was time to swim back to the boat.
As the water was choppy it wasn’t possible to go into the other cave, so instead they were taken to a snorkelling spot where Matt saw some soft coral and lots of clownfish.
We spent the afternoon hitting the sun lougers by the pool until it got too hot, and then walking along the beach.
Eventually we had to have the difficult discussion with reception about booking a transfer to our next stop, Ko Lipe. I say difficult because I’d already tried to have the discussion once before with them and they couldn’t speak very much English so I didn’t get very far. Luckily for us this time somebody different was on reception so I was able to sort it out witthout too much miscommunication.
For dinner we sat outside on the sand again to make the most of the view for our final night on Ko Mook (by the way Ko Mook can be spent in many different ways hence on the location listing above it's spelt Ko Muk - it can also be Koh Mook too just to confuse things). We both checked out the menu to order the cheapest meal we could find. I
settled on chicken fried rice (again) for £3 and Matt had chicken and cashew nuts for £5 - expensive by Thai standards. To fill us up we splashed out on a couple of bread rolls for £1.50!
Tonight we couldn’t see the moon at all but the light pollution from the beach meant we still couldn’t see the stars very well as we walked back to our room.
It was sad to think that we were going to be leaving the following day. We both agreed that this resort and beach were the best we’d stayed at probably since Bora Bora.
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