Day Fifteen - Ko Yao Yai

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Day Fifteen - Ta Ra Terry, Heylo Heaven

It was easy enough to get up early today despite a lack of sleep (Arsenal game only kicked off at 00.15 here...) as we were moving on to a proper island paradise, Ko Yao Yai. Terry had booked us a 9am taxi to the pier and true to form it arrived on time and we set off.

We’d got twenty yards before Angela yelled “STOP THE TAXI” and jumped out dragging Leanne from the middle seat. Turns out there was no middle lap belt and all going through Angela’s head was the old elephant car advert. In truly dramatic style she selflessly took the danger seat and off we went.
Arriving at Bong Rong Pier we were met by the ubiquitous touts waiting to make a profit at the farang’s expense. Thanks to some dumb Americans agreeing to pay the extra we were all stung for it but at 170baht for an hour long longtail ride I can’t really complain.

The longtail skipped along and worried about Leanne, we prepared a bag in case her travel sickness surfaced. It was Shannon who went a bit green though and needed to get out of the cabin and onto the prow for some air. Or maybe it was the shirtless American boys out there...?

She was helped out by an English woman sitting beside me who had recently been on a diving trip to the Similan Islands with her husband (who kindly got Shan suncream & water as he was on prow too). A place I’d love to take a trip to (a 20 hour boat trip out from Phuket towards India) she said it was truly amazing.

An hour later we arrived on Ko Yao Yai and took a 30 minute pickup ride through the jungle covered mountains to our resort. There are two main places to stay here - one on the west side and one on the east side. The East Belfast Massif stayed on the east facing Phuket. From here, we can see the hilltop Buddha overlooking Kata in the far distance - in fact we can see all of Phuket island stretched across the horizon. With the jade coloured sea it is a spectacular view from the beach.

There are about 40 guests here in total and we have around 700m of sandy tropical beach to share although today a few yachts arrived later in the day to moor for the night. It’s that kind of place.

Yes I know it’s about 4* there and all of you are back to work/school so I’ll lay off on the references to 33* sun, pristine beach, gorgeous sea and the £1 beers. I forgot to mention the cheap beer before didn’t I? Damn...

Today’s Highlights Just Look at the pics

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