Koh Mook

Days 63-66

Tomorrow morning (Mon 29^th) we will head back to the mainland from our island paradise of Koh Mook bound for Bangkok. Before reaching here I imagined that the only islands in southern Thailand that were not over run by tourists were deserted but Koh Mook has refreshingly proven that the perfect Thai islands are still alive and well. Although there are a couple of small resorts on the island they appear to be relatively empty so the island's perfect beaches are empty and island life appears to go on as normal. We intended to do a bit of island hopping but this place has proved to be so nice that we scraped that plan and spent four nights here.

Our ferry from Langkawi played a movie which must have had at least a 15 certificate, full of swear words and violence although the parents of the children on board didn’t seem concerned in the slightest and to be honest we were glad they weren't blaring Bollywood music videos. We went through Thai immigration and thus another country to our list or least to my wife's on account of my previous visit here. As a result she is now officially more travelled than I am, this is her 32nd country while I linger behind on 31. We booked our onward travel through a travel agency which we would not have dreamt of doing in India but they seemed efficient and fairly reasonable so we went with them. From the ferry port town of Satun we were herded on to a minibus with other backpackers to the town of Trang. The journey was made interesting by a driver who used the journey as an opportunity to resonance test the chassis of the vehicle with bass vibrations via his ridiculously oversized sound system and Thai rock music. With bones quivering and ears throbbing he got us to our destination before another minibus took us through the latex tree plantations to the jetty and the final part of the journey in a Longtail boat. The Longtails are long wooden boats with a 2 litre diesel outboard engine driving a propeller via an approximately 3metre (10ft) shaft. It seems an extraordinary contraption to have sitting on the end of a boat but even more so by the fact it is mounted on a pivot and controlled and steered by hand. They are used for fishing and transport in Southern Thailand and with its unorthodox drive system our longtail powered over the calm waters to Koh Mook very quickly.

We landed on the jetty of Koh Mook (pronounced "co muck") and after a few minutes wandering we came to Coco Lodge, which consists of a restaurant with simple bamboo huts. It’s a lovely relaxed place and without a doubt the best place we have stayed yet in our travels. The owners and staff are friendly and genuine, helping us with our queries about the island and running tours around the island and most importantly everyone does so with a great smile.

The following day we went to explore the sandbar beach on the east of the island, a few minutes walk away. The beach has squeaky white sand and at low tide forms a pointed sand bar as picture perfect as you can get. It was stiflingly hot though and I needed shade fast. The resort on the beach although sparsely occupied still wanted us to pay 400bhat (£8/$13) just to sit at one of their tables, and that was before we had even bought a drink! We found a palm tree further down the beach and let the late morning merge into afternoon before heading back for lunch and our arranged snorkeling trip with the Coco Lodge’s owner.

The hotel owner took us on the trip and it turns out he had lived in LA back in the 90’s before setting up Coco Lodge on Koh Mook. He reckons that the money isn’t great but he has a great lifestyle. It was difficult to argue as the long tail took us along the limestone cliffs on the north side of stunning Koh Mook, a truly magnificent place to go to work every day. Our first stop was snorkeling on a coral reef under the cliffs, which was just ok in comparison to our trip to Belize last year. The snorkeling was only a taster though for the main course on our boat trip to Koh Mook’s famous Emerald Cave.

The Emerald Cave is a cave that is completely surrounded by sheer cliffs but open to the sky with a tidal pool and beach at its base. It was only discovered about 20 years ago and is accessible only by swimming the 80metres or so from the sea. It’s a popular place and can get quite crowded but our guide took us in the evening after the day trippers had passed. It was a short but pitch black swim until the sunlight from the cave came peering around a corner to reveal the beach ahead. Upon reaching the cave it has the feel of being artificial, almost like some kind of fantasty walled garden of some Italian eccentric. It is hard to imagine that something like this can even exist but exist it does and it’s a beautiful peaceful place. That was until an Australian couple came paddling out of their darkness and into our little Eden. They were on their own sail boat and spending a few years drifting the high seas and gradually working their way around the world. Alright for some eh? And here we were thinking that that we were having a good trip. Soon enough it was time to go and after a star fish grabbing snorkel later we were back at our beach hut.

 

Yesterday (Sat 27^th) we took a leisurely cycle across the island to sunset beach. The road around the island is little more than a footpath at best and actually peters out into a dirt track on the west side of the island. Thankfully it is only wide enough to accomdate scooter and push bikes so there are no cars on the island. Tsunami evacuation signs are everywhere, a positive legacy of the tragedy in 2004. The Trang islands were relatively unaffected in the Boxing Day Tsunami, but much of coastal Southwest Thailand was, with many people losing their lives and property.

Sunset beach is a secluded beach with a cliff face framing its specular setting. Once again it was all but deserted with the resort on the beach appearing to be completely empty. We lazed the day away here, and soon enough all those hard days travelling are but a fading scar on our memory.  We had lunch at a friendly Thai woman’s restaurant, she was expecting her sixth child in about a week but it didn’t stop here from running the restaurant or holding a virtually one way conversation with us in her broken English. The Thai’s on a whole seem a friendly bunch, always smiling in comparison to Malaysian’s who are quite a reserved lot. 

We had a great lazy day on Saturday and we decided that we would repeat the day on today (Sun 28^th)! Calling at the same lady’s restaurant for lunch and lazing on sunset beach for the actual sunset, which was spectacular. The beaches here I should add, have totally thrashed anything we have seen before well and truly into second place, they are perfect! What’s more the genuine peaceful island lifestyle here makes any of the other resorts we have stayed at feel like Las Vegas. In fact it doesn’t feel like a resort at all, but an island. The sunset was the perfect end to the beach leg of our trip, the next beach we see could well be in California.

Tomorrow morning we take off for the mainland and will make straight for Bangkok avoiding the undoubted hordes of revellers for the famous full moon party in Koh Pha-ngan. It will be Halloween when we are in Bangkok and as it is a festival that is celebrated in both Ireland and America we intend to take it to Thailand as much as we can.