Southern Thai Beaches

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Standing on the Northeastern shore of Lankawi island you can see the silhouette of the closest islands of the Ko Tarutao Marine National Park a mere 3 kilometers away.

The problem is that Lankawi is Malaysian and Ko Tarutao is Thai territory.

To get between the two we had to get a ferry to Satun on the Thai mainland to pass through immigration (2 hours), a pick-up and a taxi along the coast to another port called Pak Bara (90 minutes), and then a ferry out to the islands (up to 4 hours).

Chucking in the waiting time, from a pre-dawn start we arrived in the last light of the day.


We had chosen to visit the most distant of the island group, called Ko Lipe, as the guidebook promised an appealing combination of available accommodation and low impact tourism (although, of course, we still want air conditioning and 24 hour electricity).

As it turned out, Ko Lipes days as an unheralded island paradise are firmly in the not-to-distant past.

The handle on my new case broke off the moment I stepped from the launch onto the beach and so I was pleased to find that the resort on that particular patch of sand had a suitable bungalow available.

Had I been able to carry my luggage there would have been a wealth of beachfront resorts to choose from (though we had already decided to avoid the 'Poo' and 'Porn' establishments).

Ko Lipe is only about a kilometer across so, although we spent most of our time in supine inactivity, we did manage to get a good look at it.

By chance , we had landed up on the best beach, a 1 km stretch of fine sand and clear waters backed by bungalow operations of surprising capacities.

On the other side of the island the sea was choppier, the wind was windier and the high-tide line was emphasised by an innumerable variety of plastics. Apart from that, it was exactly what you might dream of for a tropical beach, with palm-fringed beach bars and topless Scandinavians.

This was the beach inhabited by the local population of fishermen and the 'alternative' scene.

Our beach was mainly inhabited by Italian families plus a surprising number of pensioner-backpackers escaping the European winter for a few months. Chief amongst these were Jean and Tommy. Jean, a scouse livewire with a fully engaged larynx and a complicated personal history which led to her marrying a reserved Swedish air force officer, Tommy, immediately hit it off with Linda and consequently we found our itineraries merging.

Next stop was Ko Lanta. This is a much bigger island with lots of beaches and far too many resorts to choose from.

Having done the 4 hour ferry trip from Ko Lipe (with my heart in my mouth each time my case was hoisted from boat to boat) plus a lengthy wait and road trip, it was clear that we were going to arrive after dark, so I made an accommodation booking through a travel agency. This turned out to be on a big, long beach with fantastic sunsets and had a cafe doing decent porridge so we stayed a week. Jean and Tommy turned up on a moped on about day 3 to add some jollity to proceedings.

By this time I was getting a bit fed up with beaches, so I was pleased that we liked the town of Krabi so much.

As we got off the pick-up, the handle of Linda's new case broke off, so we are certainly not a good advertisement for the lookee-likee luggage industry.

We slumped into the first cafe we came to, only to be greeted by some other backpacking pensioners we had met in Ko Lipe, who showed us 'A Mansion', a really nice place to stay at a bargain price.

We got to grips with the town over the next couple of days and found it to be a most pleasant place in all respects.

The town motto is "Lively place, lovely people" and it would be quibbling to raise any arguments with this.

It has my approved combination of tourist quality facilities at local prices, which means about half the price of the other destinations so far.

We took the decision to replace our luggage (again) when we saw the ideal - though still knock-off - wheelie rucksacks in town. You should have heard the squeals of delight of our cleaning girls when we gave them our mildly damaged, but nearly new, cases.

It only later occurred to me that they probably visualised us buying them from some Knightsbridge department store, not a dodgy chinese market in Penang.

Krabi had a very good night market with signs in English so it was possible to try new things while reducing the risk of them being awful. Linda developed a taste for fried mussels whilst I checked out a variety of the local curries.

One dish I didn't have the bottle for was 'Fried chinese morning glory with red fire' - possibly a mouthful too far.

Another good thing about Krabi is that, although it is not a seaside town, such sand is only a bus or boat ride away. Rather than stay in the beachfront town of Ao Nang we decided to stay in Krabi and just visit the beach there on occasion.

Ao Nang exists as a tourist resort town and has the same atmosphere as a thousand other package holiday destinations around the world.

Just outside Ao Nang is an isolated area called Railay, which can only be reached by boat. Here an perfect beach is towered over by limestone projections called karsks (typical of the area) creating an awesome place to lie and fry. It was so nice that I didn't object to the other 500 people sharing the beach at the time.

Linda had a full body massage and I had my ears syringed before we met up with Jean and Tommy again. They persuaded us to cross the isthmus from the Andaman Sea and join them on the holiday isles in the Gulf Of Thailand where Jean was to organise hr daughters wedding.

The combined bus/ferry ticket to Ko Samui was remarkably cheap, so I bought two. The bus section went smoothly and when the small boat turned up we boarded with our luggage (still intact). Then another busload of people boarded with their luggage, then another and another.

It soon became clear that the capacity of the boat was limited only by the number of tickets sold. I reckon that there were about 200 people squashed onto that little boat.

I counted the number of lifebelts and did a quick calculation. There were four, and I calculated that I should be sitting closer to one of them.

Linda and Jean exchanged their life stories while Tommy worked his way through a couple of packets of Marlboro Lights and I kept my eye on the crest height of the surrounding waves and the variable lilt of our craft (dependant on the distribution of fatties on deck) as we chugged towards the famous isle.

We were all relieved to reach dry land after a couple of hours and headed for the area of Hat Choeng Mon on Jean and Tommys recommendation.

Ko Samui has beach resorts for all tastes, from in-your-face drink-till-dawn party animal hangouts to quiet bits with few visitors.

Hat Choeng Mon is a nice stretch catering to those who think an 11pm bedtime is sufficiently exciting after a hard day walking to and from the ice cream shop. Actually after a few days we even gave up on that and bought our ices from the charismatic beach vendor, enabling him to go home earlier.

We had found a couple of pleasant wooden bungalows and took adjacent rooms with Jean and Tommy. Jean had already commented on Tommy's snoring prowess, but we were not prepared for a series of thoracic flubbergations that would have worried the three little piggies. Fortunately, he kept waking himself up so after the third consecutive expiration we had a clear run for a few hours.

The four of us continued on to Ko Tao a week later. This became my favorite of the beachfront places we stopped in. Despite rapid development, it still has the feel of a tropical island.

As there is no package tourism (yet), everybody there has had to make the effort.

The island mainly attracts the tattooed youth of Northern Europe with the occasional backpacking pensioner thrown in the mix. Even though I am neither tattooed nor a pensioner I enjoyed the atmosphere.

Much of the youth amused themselves by racing hired mopeds around the few roads of the small island and injuring themselves as their unprotected flesh abutted with the trammelled surfaces. We developed a fascination with the variety of grazes and tarmac burns that were the mark of the incompetent and overconfident.

After Ko Tao we once again crossed the peninsula to the border town of Ranong where we could exit/enter the country and get a new visa. We arrived as a major thunderstorm broke out and trapped us in the bus station for a couple of hours.

As the weather outlook remained inclement I decided to check out the towns main hotel in case we needed more superior incarceration. I was pleased to find that it was affordable, had a pool and turned out to do a great buffet breakfast. Its main claim to fame was that it drew its hot water from a nearby spring and with the rooms all having a bath you could have your own private spa. Very nice.

Ranong has a very Chinese feel to it and few tourist facilities. Most foreigners head straight for the port and never see the town.

To get the new visa we had to hire a longboat to take us to the town of Kawthoung on the southernmost tip of Burma, which is about a 20 minute journey across a broad estuarine river system. On the Burmese side we paid 5 US$ for a day visa and then had a quick look around the town. I was prepared to spend the afternoon there, but we found that we had seen it in a few minutes. It is little more than a dusty market town, inhabited by people significantly poorer than on the Thai side.

There were large numbers of people making the trip. All the regular expats were loading up with expensive whiskys, while we found a stall selling cartons of obscure named cigarettes at £1.20 for 200, so Linda was happy (though she hasn't tried them yet).

We almost missed our next destination, Prachuapkirikahn as the conductor forgot to put us off at the spur road. Fortunately we were only a couple of km further down the road when we were deposited at the roadside. A couple of moped taxis took us into town and we decided to ride our luck by calling in at the towns poshest hotel right on the seafront.

We were exceedingly pleased to get a room with a balcony looking out over the bay, within our budget.

We knew straight away that Prachuapkirikahn was just the sort of place we like: Attractive, low key, few tourists. An ideal place to hang out for a few days.

A promenade stretches a couple of kilometres along the seafront, giving the place a European feel, except that it was bloody hot and virtually deserted.

At the North end of the promenade a wooded hill rises, topped by a Buddhist temple. Ascending the steps to the temple in the late afternoon we passed through hoards of monkeys. They were indifferent to us as we carried no food for them (on purpose 'cos we're scared). At the top there were great views across the town, sea and countryside.

Our final stop before returning to Bangkok was the resort town of Hua Hin. This is a seaside town supposedly popular with Thai holidaymakers, although I can't say that we spotted many.

There was definitely a preponderance of male expats and package tourists. It was difficult to tell which of these groups was the most active when it came to picking up the bar girls, but there were blokes of all ages and descriptions strutting their stuff with a lithesome 'girlfriend' on their arm. Honestly, even Albert Steptoe could pull here.

The town had quite a buzz about it, with loads of bars, restaurants and a decent night market. The beach and sea were nothing compared to the previous destinations, but we enjoyed lying on sunbeds and watching the world go by until the next thunderstorm rolled in.

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Photos

Krabi
Cool Traffic Lights