Blogs from Thailand, Asia - page 18

Saturday 22nd February 2020 Koh Muk translates as Pearl Island. We said it was a little gem! Like Koh Jum and Koh Yao Noi, it is rated as one of the few remaining truly exotic islands of Southwest Thailand, with very limited tourism and stacks of local flavour. We love it here! Well, we have stayed in countless bamboo thatched huts in our time, in different countries, but none as charming as the one we have now on the eastern side of Koh Muk: Everything is bamboo, the floor, window shutters, doors and furniture. Often the bed is just made of cheap boards with a hard mattress. This bed is chunky and solid bamboo, with a lovely deep mattress and soft pillows. The chunky furniture is made in the same rustic style. Of course, being bamboo, ... read more

Oh! We do have interesting journeys and we certainly travel in style! The small dirty pick-up truck that arrived at 9.15 a.m. on Saturday morning to take us to the pier on Koh Jum, already had four people on board, one of whom was very large. We had to climb up over the tailboard and sit with our rucksacks between our knees in a tiny space and hang on tight as we bumped along. The two young boatmen in charge of our Long-tail, were very chilled out, smoking weed as they navigated through the mangroves and then out to sea; the aroma wafted all around us as we chugged along across the Andaman waves. Eventually, “Land Ahoy!” there was the island of Koh Lanta, with its nice solid-looking wooden pier, before us. However, unlike the ferry ... read more

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Well, our journey here took longer than expected but we got here in the end! Our speed boat left Koh Yao Noi around 9.00 a.m. and should have reached Koh Pu pier in 45 minutes to drop us off, ending its journey at Koh Jum pier at 10.00 a.m. However, half way across the bay, one of the engines started playing up, so we chugged to the floating dock at Railay and we and our rucksacks were cast ashore, well on to the wobbly pontoon jetty actually. Our boatman got on his phone and about fifteen minutes later a smaller speed boat arrived from Krabi on its way to Koh Lanta. The driver of this smaller boat was very young and he crashed into the pontoon at speed, then asked us to ... read more

Our hotel was a city style, clean and comfortable, the breakfast was adequate. In the morning we travelled in the van to the west to the railway station at Phunphin , we cycled through a busy town and across the chulachomkaou railway bridge and on through into rural southern Thailand along the banks of the beautiful river. To the temple at Wat Tham Sing Khom , an ancient cave was uncovered during construction work, it has examples of wall paintings and Chinese pottery embedded in the ceiling. The cave has become a place of worship and contains many buddahs! A quick snack and we headed on through a rubber plantation where we met local people harvesting the rubber, counting, weighing and transporting it to the factory for processing. I’m this area there were also many mango ... read more

So after what was a bit of a disastrous start, I got up early and went for breakfast and then walked to Charlie Beach, which was a lovely road through the trees and took about 25 minutes. The local people were so friendly but I was shocked by the state of their houses, rubbish everywhere around them, no attempt to even bag stuff up. Houses on stilts over a muddy area with concrete walkways. It was really poor. One local woman had bought an ice cream and just dropped the wrapper on the floor without a thought. To tourists the place looks uncared for and scruffy and they need to clean up their act and improve the accommodation if they want to to profit more. In spite of this, I grew to really like it. At ... read more