Koh Tao Part 4

Koh Tao – Day 4

Last day on the islands (best day ever!!)

We had breakfast at Moondance, soaking in all that gorgeous view. Quick taxi ride to our next hotel, and guess what? We got a room with our balcony  overlooking the coastline below! What a perfect spot for enjoying a couple of drinks in the evening…

It was early, so we went down to the beach just to jump into the water. The beach right next to our hotel was lovely. It seemed that every beach we visited on Koh Tao was even more beautiful than the previous one. And we decided to go  for a walk as it was just so beautiful. We didn’t have a map as we didn’t take much with us (since we were only  going down to the beach for a quick jump into the water), so we just started walking in the direction where we thought we were supposed to go. We wandered through pretty narrow footpaths between  bungalows, passing one resort and then another, until we walked out to the most gorgeous beach we’ve seen on the islands.

Turquoise blue water, palm trees and the loveliest tiny beach surrounded by rocks. We didn’t want to get out of water. But when we finally did, we jumped onto the swing hanging on two palm trees. And a couple of hours later when we decided to head back, we found a slackline tensioned between two palm trees!

It was hard to  leave the cute little beach, but we finally did get back and chilled out in our balcony for a bit. Tiny glass coca-cola bottles, they are just so cute, they will make me start drinking coke! (and they did – I’ve been drinking so much coke here in Thailand like I never had in my entire life. Not good!)

And then we went out for the first time while we were on the islands. We walked out on the beach: colourful light lines along both sides  of the beach, warm water, gentle breeze… We walked along the beach choosing which bar we’d like to sit at and one of them was playing reaaally good music and it was loud enough to listen to from about 10 metres away. So we bought some beer and more tiny cola bottles and just chilled out on the beach next to the bar playing awesome music, taking some pictures.  It seemed like someone was playing my  youtube playlist!  There were two men swinging fire balls and one of them was teaching a girl how to maneuver the balls.

We sat down on the swing, listening to the music, watching them play with fire. Only a few people on the beach, awesome music, lovely view, and the two of us. We sat there taking all that atmosphere in… And we thought that if it wasn’t for me, Vidmantas wouldn’t be here and if it wasn’t for Vidmantas, I wouldn’t be here either. We would probably both be dreaming  about it, but wouldn’t have gone to live on the other side of the world on our own. And it’s great when you can dream together and then go and make those dreams come true.

Koh Tao – Day 5

We had a posh European breakfast (with cappuccino! We missed  good coffee…) in one of the beach restaurants and then walked to the pretty beach. We were laying on the swing, listening to waves, eating mangoes and langan fruit and we simply did not want to leave. 

When we were in the ferry sailing away  from the shore it felt sad. Not sure whether it was because we were leaving the islands or whether it was because Koh Tao was the most beautiful one, but it  just didn’t feel like we had enough time to enjoy it. I was looking at the beautiful shore getting further and further away, hoping I would come back there at some point with more time to just enjoy it. 

It’s strange that when we got back to Chumphon it felt a bit like coming back home after a nice holiday – as if we’d lived there for a while already and had just gone for a holiday to the islands.

For more stories from the same trip read: Koh Tao Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, Koh Phangan Part 1 and Part 2, Angthong Marine Park, and Koh Samui.

More photos on our Flickr page here.

Koh Tao Part 3

We’re continuing with the stories from my notebook about Koh Tao. And if you haven’t read these yet, here’s Part 1 and Part 2.

Koh Tao – Day 3

In the morning we spent a couple of hours in the shade overlooking the beach, chilling, eating, looking at the photos and  writing – the day started great. We then walked to the pier where a taxi picked us up to take us to Moondance Magic View hotel. Well, if I thought the songthaew ride in Phangan was fun, this was even better. Probably because there was no backrest whatsoever, just a plain bench at an equal height with the edge of the car boot, and a rail behind it to hold onto. And the roads where even worse than in Phangan – much steeper and full of ditches.  Well, not full of them, it seemed that the ditches were what made the road! My arms got tired from holding onto the rail and at some point I had to hold onto the bench with my feet!

We reached the hotel and the view from the restaurant was really, as the hotels’ name suggests – magic. Rocky shores, turquoise blue water, a couple of tiny islands quite close, just soo lovely. Our bungalow was really cosy too, with a wicker hammock in the porch and outdoor shower nicely decorated with pebbles.

Although after a couple of nights with the cockroaches in Hacienda we were quite vary of sleeping in a bungalow where there were more holes than wall material, so we put the mosquito net down on the bed straight away, tied knots on any holes we found and tucked the ends neatly under the mattress. We also took anything we might need to the bed as we planned for the worst – that we’d be awake all night and wouldn’t go outside the mosquito net. (reading this now makes me laugh, but back then we were a bit paranoid!)

Now that the bed was protected from insects we could relax. We walked down to the rocks, took some pictures, chilled out in the hammock, had a nice dinner at the restaurant and stayed there until the lights went out around 9 pm.

We walked back to our hut, lit some candles and stayed outside for a while. It was nice and calm as the mosquitoes and even the ants in the bathroom have gone to sleep. We took the candles inside and shortly fell asleep, feeling safe and calm under our mosquito net, with nice warm candle light surrounding us.

Keep reading about Koh Tao in Part 4.For more stories from the same trip read: Koh Phangan Part 1 and Part 2, Angthong Marine Park, and Koh Samui.

More photos on our Flickr page here.

Koh Tao Part 2

We’ve just returned from our trip around the Thai islands in the Andaman sea and going through our photo folders realised that we haven’t yet shared all the stories from our last island trip! But the good thing about taking notes and pictures when you travel is that you can look back and relive all those beautiful memories again.

We started our last trip in Koh Phangan (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 – trip to Angthong Marine Park), then continued to Koh Samui and finally, Koh Tao, which we loved the most.  So here it goes – the second day on this lovely island:

Koh Tao – Day 2

We got up, packed some bread and cucumbers (we’re that kind of people) and rented a kayak for 4 hours as we wanted to avoid paddling in the heat. There was no question of where we wanted to go – to the tiny Nangyunan island at the end of Sairee beach. We got further away from the shore (to avoid maneuvering round fishing boats) and we realised how lucky we were that we didn’t take the kayak for a full day. After 15 min of fighting the waves we were already tired! But of course we kept going and 45 min later reached the pretty island. We stopped on the beach and got off, but as soon as we did that, some guy walked to us saying we have to pay an entrance fee, so we jumped back into our kayak and started paddling around the island. The waves hitting rocks on the shores, lots of crabs running to hide whenever we came close – sometimes we just stopped for a while, allowing waves to swing the kayak while we enjoyed just being there.

After a while the sun started burning more aggressively, so we headed back. This time we were kayaking close to the shore as it was nice to watch the rocky shores from such a small distance, and when we reached the beach we were paddling laid down in the kayak with people swimming and snorkeling around us, a cute black dog playing in the water, fishing boats everywhere around…

When we came back we decided to make our way up to the viewpoint marked on the map not too far from where we were staying. We walked through a beautiful  palm tree forest and then lost our way for a bit – it was difficult to tell whether we were walking across people’s backyards or a footpath.

By the time we reached the viewpoint it started raining. We hid under a house on the poles and admired the view of the rocky coastline below. As we found out later, this was better than the viewpoint – there was a nice temple at the top of the  hill, but you couldn’t see anything below through the trees. A random thought crossed my mind that we’d probably start losing weight soon, walking up and down these hills and constantly sweating…

By the time we came back it was already dark. We took our camera for a walk along the beach until we chose one of those beachfront bars for a drink. There was a guy playing with a guitar, waves crashing 5 metres away from our  feet, a nice warm light coming from a fire torch in a glass bottle… And for some reason it felt a bit like sitting by a fire somewhere in the woods in Lithuania.

More photos on our Flickr page here. Keep reading about Koh Tao in Part 3 and Part 4.

Koh Tao, part 1

Before departing from Koh Samui we stocked up on soy milk and biscuits as there aren’t any Tesco’s on Koh Tao. It’s always a good idea to have emergency food as you never know if you’re going to get vegetarian food in small villages – people love their meats here. The ferry was about an hour late so we had time to observe other travellers bustling about with their huge bags in the heat. Some people had a 65 litre backpack on the back, a 25 litre bag on the chest, a camera around the neck, a wallet in one hand and a suitcase in the other. We quickly realised that carrying a bag of soy milk in addition to our 26 litre Ospreys was not that inconvenient anymore.

Shamely, on Koh Phangan we had to change from our shiny air-conditioned boat to, let’s say, a more timeworn one with a gasoline scent. You can see straight away that there are fewer people travelling to Koh Tao as the boats are smaller and only run once a day, at least with Songserm. They also ask to leave your bags on the deck when boarding, but we just smiled, pointed to our “26ers” and took a seat inside. Tip: try to sit in a shade on the deck as you’ll have plenty of fresh air, won’t get sunburnt and be able to enjoy the view.

Another tip is to always ask for a map, as people here just can’t give directions or have no sense of distances whatsoever. I suppose some may feel awkward directing tourists with big rucksacks to walk any kind of distance in the heat so more often than not they just offer you get a taxi. The weather was lovely, there were few people on the road, and we could see the white sand and blue water through the floor-to-ceiling windows of restaurants and diving shops. Even though it was still early afternoon, we had the right for a beer, and so we did. It was funny to see Auste just walking along, drinking beer in the middle of the day, right on the street – not a very usual sight, as she’s always the one paranoid about breaking the law, getting in trouble with the police and so on.

I suppose the laws on the island are so laid-back that even dogs were riding motorbikes! (photo) They do seem to enjoy it a lot and stay surprisingly stable with their paws on the handles (or shall I say ‘pawndles’?)

We walked past many bars catering for western clientele, but just couldn’t get our heads round eating burgers or pizzas on a tropical island. So we asked a local vendor if he could make some rice with vegetables, but he simply fired back “only chicken or pork”. Fair enough, I guess we have plenty of biscuits… We did have a nice meal elsewhere though and were ready for a day of kayaking.

Keep reading about Koh Tao in Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.For more stories from the same trip read: Koh Phangan Part 1 and Part 2, Angthong Marine Park, and Koh Samui.

More photos on our Flickr page here.