Koh Samui, Koh Adang, Koh Lipe, and Everything In-Between

Koh Samui

We left Koh Tao and spent our first full day on Koh Samui exploring the best way we knew how: rented a motorbike, and drove (Bob did…not me. I sat on the back and tried not to look too much like the complete antithesis of all the cool chicks who just kind of plop down on the back of a bike, swinging their legs nonchalantly while playing with their fingernails, reading a book, shuffling cards, or whatever else it is that they do while seemingly not worrying about the sharp curves and treacherous traffic speeds that the driver is undertaking while toting them around). Let’s be clear: I am not cool. I can just feel the smirks of all the passer-bys, laughing at my obvious tenseness, my tight grip on the bike, and the intense alertness of a backseat driver written all over my face. As a Thai, you must be able to spot a nervous, uncool foreigner on the back of a motorbike from a mile (or to a Thai / the rest of the world, 1.6 kilometers) away. Anyways, we sped around the East, Southeast, and South-central parts of the island (which is much bigger and busier than Koh Tao). We visited a few Wats (Temples), one of which contained the mummified body of a monk from the 1970’s; it sat in a clear glass case in the entryway of the Wat, wearing sunglasses and wrapped in the traditional orange monk garb. We also hiked up to a waterfall in the middle of the island, where we saw elephants abound! We visited the infamous Hin Ta and Hin Yai (Grandpa Rock and Grandma Rock) formations, and we hung out on Lamai beach. A pretty good day, I’d say.

According to the map, we've only gone about 3 inches....

Hin Ta, Hin Yai (Grandpa & Grandma Rock)

See, told you!

The few days that we spent on Koh Samui marked the end of any semblance of plans that Bob and I had made in Bangkok. Before we left Bangkok initially, we planned on heading to Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai, Koh Tao, and Koh Samui. After that…it was all back to drawing board to think up what other kinds of crazy places we could go explore and experience. This made Koh Samui an interesting point in our trip; we were happy to be on an island in the Gulf of Thailand (no doi), but we were actually a bit sad to be leaving Koh Tao, and also highly aware that it was time to get back to the plan-making phase – this time, making sure to include a visa run to Malaysia so as to extend our stay in Thailand before being able to apply for a worker’s visa once we are actually employed. Since this is all quite foreign to us, we spent a good amount of time on the Internet and in-and-out of immigration offices and tourist visa-run shops trying to figure out what the deal was. Not that exciting, so I am going to cease blogging about that instantly and show you a cool picture instead.

We did, however, manage to meet up again with Aui and Dani for a night of unexpected and quite accidental exploration a seedy and eccentric strip of Koh Samui night-life on our way to Reggae Pub for some hilarious Thai renditions of 90’s American grunge and pop music. How…exciting!

We extended our stay one more day, not for the same reasons that we spent extra time in Koh Tao, but instead, really just to figure out what the heck to do next. So we booked a night at the Hakuna Matata hostel, hit the beach for mine and Bob’s maximum relaxation/regrouping time quota of about 45 minutes (enough for some reading and a swim) before we met Jiggy, an adorable, goofy, and kind travel agent who hooked us up with our taxi --> bus --> ferry --> bus --> minivan --> bus --> car travel itinerary in order to get from one side of the isthmus to the other.

Sometimes this is what our planning looks like.

After a long (looooong) day of all sorts of different kinds of traveling, we made it to Satun (Sa-toon), which is far south on the west coast of Thailand, close to the border of Malaysia. We lucked out big time here. We read that there really isn’t that much to do in Satun, and that it’s more of a stop-over place that you wind up at on your way somewhere else, but Bob and I? We like Satun. We stumbled upon a gem of a hostel, called “Ang Yee’s Guesthouse and Art Gallery.” Very cool. I’ll let Bob elaborate on this for you, because I could tell, even before we actually met the guy, that Bob and the owner, Mr. Chia, had formed a bond:

“Call me when you in Satooooon and I pick up you!” yelled Mr. Chia in his innocent, yet loud tone.

“Well, Mr. Chia, I think I am in Satun I just have no idea where your hostel is,” I said as I walked up and down the aisle of the bus.

Between the 14-hours of travel to get to Satun, falling in and out of sleep on the 4 different vehicles we had been on that day, and the bus driver rambling on in Thai and attempting to figure out where to drop me off in this somewhat spread out city, I honestly thought we’d never make it to Ang Yee’s Guesthouse. We found the place the night before online, but it wasn’t on “Hostel World,” we had no idea how much it cost, and the guy who owns the hostel is saying he’ll come pick us up when we get into town? The only things that were going through my head were: Who is Mr. Chia? and what exactly am I getting myself and my girlfriend into in this region of Thailand to which we both had never been?

The bus driver finally just decided to drop us off in the middle of town, so we got some food and called Mr. Chia again. It was an interesting game of phone tag for a while, but not American Phone Tag where you keep missing each other’s calls – Thai Phone Tag – where the one American on the phone can’t understand the Thai guy, and the Thai guy has no idea where this fast-talking New Yorker is in his city.

Once we finally cleared things up, Mr. Chia showed up within a couple of minutes. He steps out of the car and stands in front of us with his John Lennon-esque round glasses, Hawaiian flowered shirt, no shoes, and a newsboy cap. He looked at us with a blank and goofy stare (one that we found out he has quite often) and there is silence for about 15 seconds.

“Mr. Chia?”

“Yes!”

A smile quickly jumped onto his face, he took our bags, and we hopped in his car. We drove to his guesthouse, which ironically was right down the street. When we arrived, we walked through the opening under the “Ang Yee’s Guest and Art House” to find a very tranquil, Zen, and articulate place to hang out for the night. The whole main floor was wide open with all great wood-work, painting and drawings on the walls, a few people lounging around, and a little backyard with a bamboo-kitchen-hut for cooking.

We were completely fried from the journey and although we were very low-maintenance at that particular time, Mr. Chia stopped at nothing to make sure we were beyond comfortable in his place of lodging. He made sure we had enough blankets, a comfortable bed, hot showers, coffee in the morning, all the right information about our bus the next day, and most of all: he made sure we were relaxed. There was no talk of paying for anything or explanation of why we were there; all Mr. Chia cared about was that we were ready to chill out in his guesthouse.

It turns out Mr. Chia had grown up in Satun. He was an artist who left for a while to travel and pursue his art career. Two years ago, he decided that he wanted to move back to his hometown. To his dissatisfaction, his hometown wasn’t a very welcoming town in the hostel category. Since he loved traveling, people, art, and chilling out so much, he decided to open up his own guesthouse for the traveling folk coming through his town. All I can say is that I’ve been to many hostels in my day, and not once has the owner dropped everything to come and pick me up (I found that he was doing that for multiple people throughout our stay).

With all that said, this is a big shout out to Mr. Chia; you are truly a member of the League of Extraordinary Thai Gentlemen. Bravo, sir.

Chia and Trusty Sidekick "UK Gary"

Okay, it's Emily again! Saturday morning, we caught a van and then a tuk-tuk to make it to the pier, only to find that all of the ferryboats to Koh Tarutao are booked. We had done a ton of reading and researching about this island and we were so psyched for this trip. Needless to say, we were feeling a little deflated. It was a whole lot of traveling to have a wrench thrown in the works now, but that seems to be how it always goes. When you are in the midst of one of these dilemmas, it feels like your troubles might register on the scale of a grand catastrophe. We had a PLAN - and now, all of a sudden…once again, we didn’t. Now, when you picture us landing at the pier and discovering that the ferryboats are all booked, I’m guessing you probably picture us walking up to the ticket booth, slap-happy as a bunch of clams, to find a sign in the window that says “Sold Out” – or maybe you envision an official at the counter apologizing and delivering the bad news. But that’s not how it goes at Pak Bara Pier. There is no organized Ticket Booth, or Ferry Ticket Organization, or anything like that. Instead, you get dropped off with all of your bags in the hot, southern Thailand sun, and you make your way around an enormous horse-shoe loop the size of your average high school track field, checking in at each and every tiny ticket shop along the way to see who you can haggle to the lowest price, and to see if ANY of them can get you on a boat. In this case, nobody could.

Hearing “No” that many times in a row is enough to break a girl down. It was my BIRTHDAY weekend. Did none of these people CARE?! I wanted to see turtles lay their eggs on the beaches of this wondrous National Park I read about in my Thailand/Island-Christmas-present- guidebook my parents got me before my trip! Boo-hoo. Poor me, right? That, my friends, is what we call “White Whine.” Looking back at my intense discouragement in that moment is laughable. Basically, the real issue was deciding which incredible and miraculous other island in the Andaman Sea we should go discover instead. What a tough choice, huh. “Bob, I’ve never even HEARD of Koh Adang,” I kept saying, “And my guidebook only mentions it for like a milli-second.” But that is exactly where we went. Eventually.

We ended up waiting at the pier for a couple unexpected additional hours, as our boat went to get gas…we think. We boarded our boat, unsure if it really was our boat or not (this is a common theme in our travels – we are always triple checking if we are on the right bus/boat/tuk-tuk/van-route/unicycle/taxi/dolphin/etc. All of our checking never really comes to any fruitful reassurance though. The truth is, we never - or rarely - really know where we are or where we’re going…but I guess that’s half of the…fun? – Or at least a decent portion of the experience. At least we’re learning a lot, right?  

So, we get on the ferry, slowly but surely - because after an extensive ferry-delay, those nice folks on the pier that you spent time people-watching, exchanging smiles with, or small-talking with, somehow drastically morph into nothing but elbows and suitcases. People. Get. Pushy. And our biggest gripe with that? The fervent intent to avoid eye-contact. I think sometimes people think that not looking at you as they execute these rude maneuvers makes them appear oblivious, like maybe their rudeness will be excused as an accidental "Oops! Didn't see you there." Now, I am a big fan of the common-courtesy merging approach. We all take a little and give a little. We create an organized system. We let the family with two small children stay intact instead of forcing the mom to peer over shoulders and peek through cracks in the crowd to make sure that her girls are still walking behind their dad, holding on to the straps of his backpack in a vain attempt to not get separated. We say excuse me, pardon me, Kor-thod-Ka. We look at each other. But, alas, the world is not that way. Some people want to get on the boat, claim their real estate, and get right back to sitting. But that is all tangential – I want to tell you about our amazing trip!

After the bulk of this chaos, we had time to regroup on the boat. I’d like for Bob to paint you a picture of what that looks like:

On a lot of these ferryboats to and from the islands, you will find a couple of seats on the roof of the ferry, as well as a few plastic chairs laid out on the deck. Other than that, there is usually a VIP room on the main floor and another VIP room on the bottom floor. VIP = Air Conditioning and a seat for an extra 100 Baht or something close to that. There are never any seats available, and being on a budget, you really don’t need to spend an extra 100 Baht on these types of things.

The only things that I want to write about today are the little nuances that make traveling cool. Yes, seeing all the sights and climbing the highest mountains are cool as well, but the humble traveler can appreciate the vehicles that take them to where he needs to go. A majority of the time, traveling first class in these VIP rooms makes you isolated from anybody unique to the area. It is when you take the opportunity to appreciate those travel days and, despite language differences and lack of sleep, make the best of the situation and just smile.

Emily and I found ourselves on the boat to Koh Adang after 36 hours of traveling. We were tired, stinky, and there were no seats anywhere to be found for this 2- hour boat ride. We decided to head below deck where there was another floor full of people, but we noticed a prime location nobody had touched: a huge pile of life-jackets tucked away under the staircase in the far corner of the boat. We took full advantage and set up two mini-life-jacket-bungalows in this corner. We were as happy as pigs in pudding (I’ve never seen a pig in pudding before, but I can’t imagine it being anything but an unbelievable experience for the pig).

Within minutes, a father and son timidly tiptoed over and sat down near us. We saw that they needed some space, so we made sure to hand over a hefty portion of our bungalow to share with them. It turned out, they were from Malaysia and going on holiday to the islands. Within minutes, they were both sleeping; the kind of sleep where your body is just contorted in the oddest position, with generous amounts of drool pouring from the small opening that recently creaked open in your mouth. I couldn’t help, but smile.

Then, one of the Thai workers from the boat came over and joined our bungalow. He didn’t speak English, but he smiled at us and handed Emily and I two bags of “Japanese Seaweed Chips.” There we were: two American travelers, a Malaysian father and son, and a member of the Thai working class hanging out on a home-made life-jacket-bungalow on the way to the islands. We all just met, but within 20 minutes, I was the only one awake. Everybody had fallen into a deep sleep. I sat there with my headphones on, took one look at everyone, put my hands behind my head, and felt the most comfortable and satisfied I have so far during my month here in Thailand.

Although not on the boat, one of Em's many mini-naps throughout our travels!

Thailand: Land of the Free

Taxi Hangout

Land of Smiles

Beautiful, right? Aren’t you glad I had Bob take that one over? Okay, so we stepped off the longtail taxi boat onto the sandy shores of The Unknown: Koh Adang…and made our way to the Visitor’s Center. Here we met our second Mr. Beau (our other Mr. Beau was our jungle trekking guide in Chiang Mai, as some of you may recall). We inquired about lodging, and Mr. Beau smiled coyly and laughed quietly while shaking his head. Another “No.” He said, “We’re booked. No more bungalows.” Bob and I stood there, a little rattled, but not defeated by any means. So we pushed further…. “Is there any other place on the island we can stay? Can we see a map?” He gestured over to the podium in shape of the island that stood in the center of the station; it contained one hand-painted map with somewhat 3-Dimensional cutouts of the whopping seven labels on the map:

1.     Waterfall

2.     Bungalows

3.     Visitor Center

4.     Chado Cliff

5.     Ranger Station

6.     Restaurant

Number seven, you ask?

7.     CAMPGROUND.

We looked again at Mr. Beau and asked, hopefully, whether or not we could camp.

He said: “Yes.”

And? He had a tent for us. And? It was already set up. And? It came with sleeping pads, pillows, and sleeping bags from the Ranger Station. And? It was literally right on the beach. Why didn’t you mention all of this in the first place, MR. BEAU? I think he liked watching us squirm. I can only imagine his inner-monologue, as he snickered at our audacity - trouncing up to the visitor’s center on a random island we knew nothing about with our fingers crossed that maybe there would be some available spot to sleep during peak season. But it worked out. For the best. As it often does.

Upon entering Koh Adang....we transformed into Coconut Heads

We set our stuff down and reveled in our success. This was a big win. It turned out to be better than our “plan” (Don’t get me wrong – I am still entirely set on visiting Koh Tarutao. Look it up, you’ll see why). But Koh Adang was just what we needed: nature, peace, quiet, beauty, refreshing waters, a 100% lack of anybody trying to sell you anything, with a dash of hey-Emily-don’t-worry-so-much thrown in. So we immediately jumped in the water to cool off – that was one of the best parts, in the Andaman Sea, you can actually cool off a bit when you go into the water. On the Gulf side I always found myself still hot when I went for a dip to “cool off.” Even though the water here was definitely not cold by any means, it still woke you up a bit and zapped away the lethargy that the sun sometimes tries to smush down on you.

Our neighbor who despite his crabby appearance was very friendly...

We ate dinner at the only restaurant on the island. Typically Thai dishes have a format: They lay out the basics for you of the noodle, rice, or curry dish, and then you add either vegetables/tofu, chicken, or seafood (sometimes pork). When the people of Koh Adang say “seafood,” what they mean to say is “obscene amounts of shrimp and squid.” Literally, I have never come close to eating that much squid in my LIFE. And I think I’m all set for a little while now. There was one particularly enormous tentacle that I’m envisioning now, that I basically ate out of some macho, delirious impulse to impress Bob. As if eating squid is somehow impressive. But I’m sure you can picture my thoughts as I ate – something along the lines of, “Yeah, Bob. I don’t care about the size of those suction cups poking out of my coconut curry between the green beans and ginger root. What? You think I only eat those calamari-esque O-rings you find at TGIFriday’s? (What part of the squid do the circles even come from?) I’ll eat the 2.5 inch-long purple arm pieces; I don’t care.”

You see, I feel like Bob does the same thing, though. But he’s worse about it. Or better? Just more daring, I guess. I weirdly envy it. Every time I think I do something cool, he just one-ups me. Let us reference the Chiang Mai blog post for an example, shall we? Snake Soup. I tried it. Bob tried it. Cool, we ate it – and you were all impressed, right? BOOM! The next day headlines read: Bob Eats Rat. Fast forward to present day: I eat obese squid tentacles, and then BOOM! A day later Bob scoops the weird, unidentifiable gray meat that looks a little bit like elephant and a little bit like tongue out of my soup bowl and takes a bite because I kept eating around it, avoiding it, because I WAS SCARED of it, okay? Geesh, Bob.

I’ll segue here for a moment and elaborate on the tongue-soup story.

We’re down in the south of Thailand now. Things are different down here, as they are in each and every region of Thailand that we’ve visited so far. As I’ve described briefly, it’s less touristy in the places we’ve seen down here so far (maybe with the exception of Koh Lipe, but we’ll get to that later). Generally speaking, we’ve noticed that things are less catered to us (Native English Speakers / Tourists) here in the south of Thailand. Does this mean people are unfriendly or unwilling to help? Absolutely not. But, the language barrier is a bigger divide than we have experienced thus far. I’ll give a shout out to good old Pimsleur’s Thai at this point (the language learning software I purchased and practiced while driving around in The States, in order to prep for our trip. Some of you have even had the pleasure of hearing it while driving around with me). What Thai we have learned has come in handy more-so here than anywhere else so far. As you may know, the Thai language is written in an entirely different script – a script that is completely indecipherable to me and to Bob. Most menus and signs we’ve come across are written in two languages: Thai and English – lucky us. But, down south, that is not typically the case. We have been doing a lot more of just looking at the pictures of food on the wall, pointing, (jumping, in my case, because I’m not always tall enough to reach the exact picture that shows what I want to eat) smiling, and hoping for the best. In this specific case, I’m going to blame the megapixels. The poster on the wall was a little fuzzy; I thought I was getting noodle soup with some Chinese kale with some other stuff tossed in. I did not see the mystery meat in the picture on the wall. But I certainly saw it in my bowl. And I certainly saw it travel from my bowl, across the table in between Bob’s chopsticks, and into his mouth. Yum.

I apologize, this post has been pretty scattered, but there is so much to share with you all! I want to make sure I get the good stuff in, and I know most of you were probably secretly, or not so secretly, hoping for another weird food post anyway. Which brings me to another scatter-brained thought: Let us know what you’d like to hear about! Leave us comments down yonder in the space at the bottom of the page. If there is something you’re curious about, something you’d like to see pictures of, something you’d like to ask our very novice, but warmly-given opinion about – tell us!

Okay, now back to Koh Adang – After the evening we will henceforth regard as Squidfest, Bob and I hung out and played cards and watched a Thai group-retreat ceremony of some sort, which involved some music, some group singing, and lots of unrecognizable (to us) chatter and speeches. It’s fun that way; we get to imagine what kind of group they might be, where they’ve come from, what they’re talking about, who the funny ones are, etc. So we stayed out at the restaurant until well into nighttime, at which point we raced back into the ocean for a midnight swim. The moon was so huge though you could see straight through to the bottom. We could have gone scuba diving right then and there (but my goggles broke). This is a favorite pastime of mine, though. Night swims. Day swims are awesome as well, of course, but we all know that. Usually when you night swim, it feels like the whole ocean is yours. I like that.

We woke up the next morning to the beginnings of a blazing sky visible from our tent at the start of an amazing sunrise. From the shore we promptly watched it, admired it, and went back to bed happily until the heat of the day woke us about an hour later (you can never sleep very late in a tent, can you?). It was time for our nature-adventure day.  

On our way to Chado Cliff, before we even left the campground, we saw a family of monkeys on the prowl for some people food. We had heard about these hilarious and dastardly fellows, who ransack bungalows and swipe up any food they can find. They scamper along the beach, weave through tents, shoot up the trees – I only wish they’d also come for a swim. So we watched the monkeys do their monkey business, and went on our way along the beach and up the mountain. The views! They’re amazing. This, is a beautiful place in the world. Not to mention, after two days of various forms of sitting in different places on different transportation vessels, it feels so good to get outside and move around and, you know, climb mountains and stuff.

View of Koh Lipe from the cliffs of Koh Adang

Birthday Party atop the cliff!

So we hiked and climbed and looked and swam and read and relaxed and ate and….began a new hike! This was ambitious, but we knew it was our last day on Koh Adang and we wanted to see as much as we could.  

It was a little past five when we started, which is daringly close to sundown, but Bob had his trusty headlamp, and I had my flashlight and bug spray, so we went for it. The waterfall hike was nice, absolutely, but we just didn’t have the daylight to climb as high as we would have ideally liked to – so we “settled” for a nice evening hike up to the small-stream-falling-nicely-down-some-big-rocks hike instead. I’m sure in Monsoon Season it’s outrageous. On our trip back down we heard more monkeys, but they were being sneaky, cheeky little guys, and they wouldn’t come out to play. We saw TONS of lizards of a variety of sizes (none quite as big as the dinosaurs we saw at Lumphini Park, though), and saw one obscure creature that looked like something that might occur theoretically if a deer and a rat mated. Bob is convinced it was a mongoose, but I disagree. Again, neither one of us is knowledgeable on the subject, so this is kind of a futile description.

Really vague, unclear photo of the mystery rodent - but it's the best we could do.

We also saw BATS up close and personal for the entirety of our quick jaunt back to the beach in the twilight. Bob had a number of very close bat-to-the-face encounters, but we made it out alive and well and happy in time for dinner, followed by another night swim where Bob, impressively, completed 8 underwater somersaults without coming up for air. Invigorating stuff.

Bob here – Emily is being modest. She completed six somersaults before I did to hold the record. For her safety, we both felt it was appropriate for her to stop somersaulting for the evening. With that said, I hadn’t done any somersaults yet that night. I politely asked if I could attempt to do as many somersaults as I could handle. Emily told me that when she was a kid, she did 13 somersaults; I was intrigued, invigorated, as well as astounded. My 8 is nothing compared to baby Emily’s 13. Back to you, Em.

The next day, as of course you are all well aware, was my Golden Birthday. I turned 25 years old on the 25^th of March. In Thailand. And it ruled. I’ll recap briefly:

Sunrise, Breakfast, Monkeys, Boat Taxi, Koh Lipe, Bamboo Hut, Internet Interviews, Jobs, Celebrations, and Desserts. I choose first to elaborate on Desserts. I’m not sure if this counts as dessert in your eyes or not, but it felt like dessert-for-breakfast to me. Bob snuck out and surprised me with a Banana Lassi (yogurt smoothie) for breakfast once we got to Koh Lipe. They are amazing. Usually, back in the States, I tried to refrain from any overzealous candy consumption. Candy bars and the likes were an extreme rarity for me. Ice cream, cookies, etc – bring it on, any time, any place, I’m ready. But candy? Not really. Here, in Thailand, something has switched, and I am teetering on a disconcertingly high Peanut M&M consumption rate. I just love them. And they are everywhere. So they have become a Thai staple in my diet: Rice, Noodles, Curry, Peanut M&Ms. So while Bob kicked off his Skype interview in our Bamboo hut, I walked down to the market to treat myself to a birthday pack. If you’re counting, that’s two birthday desserts thus far. After the successful interviews, Bob and I split a phenomenal Banana Mocha Coffee Shake. Wow. And that’s 3. After dinner, we split our go-to favorite post meal delicacy: Banana, Cinnamon, and Honey Roti – AND a coconut sticky rice with mango. For you math and dessert pros out there, that’s 5 birthday desserts in a day. And we got jobs.

We don’t know exactly where, but the company we’ve been hired by will place us up north. It’s not likely that we will be in Chiang Mai, but probably somewhere near there, the border of Laos, or somewhere else north of Bangkok. We will start in May after a teaching orientation. We are thrilled and relieved to have entered this phase in our trip. Our goal of teaching in Thailand is just within reach – and, we have just over a month left to travel :)

KOH LIPE

Earlier you saw photos of Koh Lipe from the cliffs of the neighboring island, Koh Adang. We spent one night on Koh Lipe after Koh Adang which is just a short 10-minute boat taxi away. We stayed in my favorite accommodation so far: A Bamboo Hut! If you have heard the song by The Who entitled, "Eminence Front,"then you can sing along to our anthem of the night. "I BEEN LIVIN IN A HUT......C'MON! IN A BAMBOO HUT."

"Livin in a hut"