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After a short, intense, but rather uneventful workweek, we headed out on Thursday for our first real adventure. The goal was to get to Koh Adang, one of the many uninhabited islands that are part of the Thai National Park system. “Koh”, by the way, means “island” in Thai.
Roman, one of Phil’s former colleagues, recently moved to the island of Lipe to dive. Upon arrival, he was so shocked by the amounts of litter on the beach that he started a weekly beach cleanup, the Trash Heroes at Koh Adang. Phil had been in touch with Roman, who was planning a special cleanup camp over the weekend, and we spontaneously decided to join.
Getting to Koh Adang involved some effort, though. Our first stop was Koh Lanta (Thai: เกาะลันตา ). This involved a first ride from Phuket in a minivan, then two different ferries over the course of six hours. Traveling in Thailand is fairly comfortable (there are rare exceptions) and works like a charm (mostly), but it does take time.
Upon arrival in Koh Lanta, we found out that the last of the ferries going to Koh Lipe (our next stop) had left. Beyond that, the last ferry of the season had departed the day before (ferries don’t run year-round due to the rainy season) and we would have to take a detour via the mainland. We were stranded for the rest of the day, and quickly dropped off our stuff in a nearby guesthouse, rented a motorcycle, and whisked off to discover a very green and lush island landscape.
Koh Lanta itself is part of the Krabi province, one of the southern provinces of Thailand. Rather small in area (the main island Koh Lanta Yai is only 27km long), it boasts a national park, an old town with many of its old wooden houses up on stilts still intact, and has a lighthouse. I love lighthouses! The island’s population of some 2000 people is mainly Muslim.
We ended up absolutely loving our half-day on Koh Lanta. Not as frequented by tourists, we came across quite a lot of the “real” Thailand we miss in other spots. Unfortunately, my map-reading skills while on the back of the motorcycle, coupled with non-existent road signs, resulted in our being on the non-lighthouse side of the island’s southern tip. BUT we did find some wonderful views, came across boatbuilders on a beach, visited a bustling (and smelly!) market (where I bought a huge bag of tamarinds for about 10 cents), and saw large herds of cows grazing in random places.
When we stopped for gas at a little roadside stop (the usual: a few gasoline-filled whisky bottles on a bamboo shelf), a man hammering a wall onto a house next to the roadside screamed “you pay for my roof!”. At first I thought he wanted me to donate something towards its cost, until I realized that what he really meant was: “you are paying for my roof” with your gas money. We got into a lengthy conversation about his new house, and he ended up showing us around his little farm set back from the road. A beautiful vegetable garden, various rubber trees he was sapping, as well as two big ponds where he was rearing catfish. Those beasts are ugly!
On Koh Lanta, we also had a top culinary experience in the form of a simple and very typical Som Tam soup. Prepared by a lady in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, it was made in THE coolest pot: a cooking pot with three compartments, where she cooked vegetables, pork, and chicken separately in the soup stock. Take-away soup means popping everything in a plastic bag and shipping it off. Simple and easy!
The next morning we traveled on to Koh Lipe; first going over to the mainland, then taking a super-crowded ride in a minivan filled with Westerners (some of whom, sadly: Swiss, had bad attitudes about the crowded part, and didn’t have the decency to keep it to themselves), and finally, catching a ferry back towards the island of Koh Lipe. A decent distance from land, we were unloaded onto a floating platform, where after paying USD 1.50 for a long-tail boat (typical watercraft of Southeast Asia: a canoe-like boat that uses an automotive engine to turn a propeller in the back), and 60 cents for the conservation of the island (a standard fee for visiting small islands) we were driven over, hopped into the shallow water and waded in.
Two days down, and we had almost arrived at our weekend destination…
