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| Relaxing on the balcony on Koh Tao. |
Our trip to the Gulf Coast was short and sweet, primarily to see Ang Thong National Marine Park and go diving off Koh Tao.
Our journey from Railay
over to Koh Samui (from where we could access Ang Thong) pretty much
epitomised everything we were starting to get annoyed with whilst
travelling through Thailand, namely being herded around like cattle
and trying to extract money out of you at every turn. We took a
longtail boat back from Railay, sat and waited whilst being
encouraged to buy drinks etc, eventually a mini bus turned up to take
us into Krabi town (not far), sat and waited for ages again, got a
big bus to Surat Thani, sat and waited, a big bus to the pier, sat
and waited, a boat over to Samui and a mini bus to our accommodation
for the night, taking around 11 hours to travel just over 150 miles.
Joy! Although Liam was feeling smug after he went round the corner
from the cafe we were waiting at and bought 6 litres of water and
some fruit for a fraction of the cost most people had paid for small
bottle of water and a sandwich. We last visited Samui in 2004 and
enjoyed ourselves immensely, being in good accommodation on an
amazing beach. It was the first time we had been to a tropical beach
so it was always going to be memorable but this time round we
actually passed the accommodation we had stayed in, and were
surprised how much in that area had changed – even the streets were
narrower due to sheer over development! Samui these days seems to be
a warren of cheap hotels with lots of drunk Europeans hanging around,
little sign of any local culture and a general air of a place in
decline, a shame really.
The main event came the
next day as we were picked up to head off to Ang Thong National
Marine Park. It took 2 hours on the boat to get there and we enjoyed
croissants and fruit along the way (this was one of the few package
tours we took on our trip so the free food was a novelty!). We
arrived in the Marine Park after an hour's journey on a boat and
split into two groups. Our group spent some time snorkelling,
swimming and jumping off the high platform of the boat whilst the
other group kayaked. The snorkelling wasn't great due to lack of
visibility but it was more than made up for by the sheer isolation of
the place, and the strange bulbous rock formations that made up the
nearby islands. It was then our turn to kayak, paddling our way
around the islands and through rocky tunnels – fantastic. Sea
kayaking is something that both of us really enjoy, even if Liam does
end up doing most of the paddling while Charlotte takes photographs!
The guide set off at a cracking pace so it was pretty good exercise
too. We watched one of the Thai guys who was keeping an eye on us
all prising shellfish off the rocks, free lunch! Back aboard the
boat we had lunch which was billed as 'Traditional Thai', despite
being more like a mixture of Indian and Chinese with extra sugar and
cream. Arriving at the next destination, half the group didn't want
to kayak any more (quite strange since we had all paid for what was
billed as a kayaking trip around the Marine Park!) which meant the
rest of us could all kayak for as long as we wanted – hurrah! We
stuck to the back and enjoyed losing everyone else from view. After
pulling into a sandy bay we climbed some seriously steep steps –
not for those afraid of heights! - to get an amazing viewpoint of the
Emerald Lake, the lagoon which inspired Alex Garland's book 'The
Beach'. The lagoon was an almost unnatural shade of green but
unfortunately it was a cloudy day and the photos just don't do it
justice! We spent a while up there enjoying the peace, and the view,
and were fairly perplexed at the rest of the group's tendency to get
to the top, take a quick photo and head straight back down. It
seemed that most of the group were of unimaginative tour-group
mentality; get the activities over with, quick photo then “where's
the beer?”. After the climb down we kayaked out into the bay on
our own (our guide seemed surprised that we had bothered!) before
returning to Samui, sunning ourselves at the front of the boat and
spotting flying fish along the way.
The next day we
travelled over to Koh Tao on a Catamaran, watching – horror of
horrors – Britain's Got Talent. The first impression of the island
was 'uh oh, nightmare...' as what felt like hundreds of touts vied
for our attention. We jumped in a 4x4 taxi and travelled down the
extremely bumpy and steep road towards New Heaven Huts at the other
side of the island. The accommodation turned out to be lovely, and
on a quiet little stretch of beach. The bungalow were spread out at
spacious intervals up in the rocky cliff-side from the beach,
certainly kept us fit getting to and from our room! The main
attraction for us here was the diving, and we were keen to use
continue with our diving after doing our Open Water course in
Malaysia. The two of us went with Neil from Coral View Diving and
did two dives, one at King Kong and one at Shark Island. It was
great to get under water again, and we saw some amazingly colourful
shoals of fish and had to contend against fairly strong currents at
Shark Island. The rest of our time on Tao we spent snorkelling and
hiking about the island. We enjoyed eating food at a restaurant
where the staff were really friendly – this unfortunately is a bit
of a novelty in some of the more touristic parts of Thailand. We had
a a great time but we were starting to feel a bit beached-out, so
were very much looking forward to heading up to Kanchanaburi for a
dose of history and some beautiful national parks.
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| Ang Thong National Marine Park & Koh Tao, Thailand |
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