The island hopping continues as we visited Koh Tao for a few days!
This was after taking a 7:30am bus to Koh Kong, spending the night, taking a Tuk Tuk to the Thai border, crossing (yay!), taking an hour and a half ride in the back of a pickup truck (don’t worry it had benches and a roof), 4 hr bus to Bangkok, the skytrain and MRT to the train station, 10:50pm train to Chumphon and then another bus to the pier, and then two hour express catamaran to Koh Tao. Oh and then another pickup truck to our hostel, O’Chai Bungalows.
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| Tuk Tuk to Thailand! |
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| Catching the SkyTrain in Bangkok |
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| Train in Chumphon |
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| Catching the catamaran to Koh Tao! |
Whew.
Island was very touristy and with everyone straight off the Full Moon Party in Koh Phangyan prices were quite high. 400 Baht ($13~) for our fan bungalow? Outrageous. But it was nice, felt like we had our own little home.
Once the sun came out the next day it was obvious why Koh Tao was known for its beaches. With shimmering turquoise water in the background, changing tone over rock and sand, the place was postcard perfect. But you couldn’t really swim at all since it was very shallow at high tide, and at low tide it was barely covering painful rock and coral. Instead the area is known for diving and snorkeling, both things I was hoping to do.
I compared a bunch of dive shops, but when I went back the next day to make my reservation, my chosen place, Pura Vida Divers, was full! I didn’t really like the feel of the other places I talked to, or their prices were higher, so I decided not to dive and Andy and I signed our day off to lazy beach reading.
But, lucky enough for us we ran into a group of people chartering a boat to a group of nearby islands connected by a barrier beach. We joined in, hiked to a pretty viewpoint up top, floated in the equally painful water there and then hung out under shady umbrellas. Unfortunately I didn’t have snorkeling gear, but I head the opposite beach had some great fish and some people even saw a squid! I even wore a bikini for the first time in forever!
At 9pm we started our next big adventure, a night boat ride to Surat Thani, our transit point to Khao Sok National Park. Overall the ride was uneventful, but luckily it wasn’t full as that could have been squished. For the ride you are assigned a berth, which is just a small mattress on the floor squished between other mattresses. I was just next to Andy, but if I hadn’t been it would have been a long 8 hours in about 2.5 feet of space.
Then we arrived in Khao Sok, looked around for guest houses (meeting a very attractive Thai/German guy in the process), ate lunch and then went off into the rain for a little hike. Little did we know it was going to pour for the next 7+ hours. In fact it is still pouring now. But we carried on, saw a few lame waterfalls and I experienced leeches for the first time. The squirming on my stomach alerted me to it at first, and while I dealt with that one spotted another climbing up my shorts. How did they get there?! By the end of the day (after my first well deserved Thai massage) I found an engorged leech sucking on my shoulder, and a bleeding wound on my thigh from presumably another leech. The anticoagulants they pass off are truly amazing as both are still bleeding 4 hours later.
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