Koh Kood

 My excellent little cabin.

 The beach, my cabin was to the left of the picture in those palm trees.

The stilt fishing village.

 Navigating the little canals.

 The main pier.

 The main beach on the right and the channel to the harbour on the left.

 A dirt road leading to...

 a beautiful waterfall.

 Standing at the base of a 500 year old tree.

 The roads were great, paved and winding.

 My scooter.

The memorial in the forest.

 Guess where they are from.

 Another little fishing village.

Goodbye Thai islands.

Wednesday, May 2^nd.

After breakfast I paid for the scooter and checked out. The wife of the manager of the hotel drove me to the dock where I caught the shuttle speed boat to Koh Kood, the third of the Thai islands I will visit. The trip was about an hour long. Initially we dodged a rain shower, but when we got near the island we ran into another. I was sitting with about six other people in the open bow of the boat. I didn’t mind getting wet, it actually felt great after the hot sun we started out in. My only concern was my bags, but luckily we weren’t out in it too long. The island has an inlet into an inner harbour where we docked and got out of the rain. I was quite wet, but my bags were good.

We were loaded up into taxi jeeps and driven to our respective hotels. I was dropped off at the A-na-lay Resort. At first I was not impressed at all. The narrow road leading to reception was broken concrete, the reception/restaurant area was all old wood and looked like it needed repairing, the ‘pool’ was about the size of a large jacuzzi without the jets, and the resort sat on a group of large rocks with no sign of a beach. Oh goodie I thought, what have I got this time? I checked and paid for my room and a few minutes later a guy took me to it. I wasn’t expecting much given what I had seen, but he led me along a long boardwalk that went around the rocks and over to the beach and then to a line of cabins behind the beach. Mine was the last one. It was a small A frame cabin but looked virtually brand new. It was very nice. It had a bathroom and shower attached to the back and the shower had an open-air roof. At night this gave access to the loud chorus of frogs and insects from the forest behind which provided a very different ambience and fragrance for your usual bathroom.

The first thing I did was go to the beach (as the sun had come out and it was very hot again). The water was very shallow, calm and warm and the bottom was beautiful smooth sand. I walked out about 100 hundred metres until it was up to my shoulders. I spent an hour in there, before going back to reception and hiring a scooter to explore the island.

Since the resort is in the southern section of the island I decided to explore the rest of the south first. I rode on a nicely paved road, up and down some very steep hills for about a half hour until I reached the end of the road where I found a fishing village on stilts. It reminded me of the one I had seen in Ghana. I wandered around looking at the houses, shops and fishing boats and nets. Then I came across a very busy seafood restaurant. There were others, but this one was the only one doing any business. I decided to have lunch. I ordered Thai money bags (like spring rolls but little bags tied with seaweed at the top) and stir-fried scallops and a pineapple smoothie. All good.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring other roads which led to other resorts where I would wander down to their beach and get wet to cool off. I explored about four and decided that I was happy at the one I booked. I really like my cabin and the small beach. Then I headed back.

That night I was in my room typing when my room started to vibrate. There was loud music coming from somewhere with incredibly loud bass. I went out and found it was coming from the resort which was about 100 metres away. When I got there, there were four guys with pieces of wood that were on fire at both ends and they were swinging them around their heads. I could also see about fifty Thai people watching in awe. Turns out there was a birthday party going on. So, I watched for a little bit and when they stopped and the music went down, I ordered dinner, ate and then headed off to bed.

Thursday, May 3^rd.

I woke up early with the sun again, had breakfast and headed out on my little green scooter. I spent most of the day riding around and exploring. I visited several resorts and went swimming or wading. The beaches here are all good, clean with great sand. The water is very warm and clear. I had a really good seafood lunch at a little restaurant near the main beach. 

Koh Kood has less than 2000 inhabitants, most of whom are fisherman or work on the coconut or rubber tree farms. The growing tourism business is providing more employment for the locals too. Western tourists tend to come here in December, January and February and the Thai tourists come from March to May and then it becomes quiet with the rainy season. 

I used the map I had to find a 500-year old tree, a couple of nice, small waterfalls, and two other ports. One is labelled as the deep-water port and I think that the bigger boats used to dock here, but the concrete dock is broken and is now closed. The other port is the one where boats leave from the island to go back to the mainland.

Late in the day I went back to my cabin and beach and swam there for a while and then hung out in my room reading and listening to music.

Friday, May 4^th.

I pretty much repeated yesterday. I had breakfast and then went out on the scooter. I had driven on most of the roads so I decided to do some again. I loved being back on a bike and riding on the well paved roads through the island. I rode back down to the fishing village from the first day and walked around there watching the goings on of their lives. Then I rode into the interior, to a place I was at yesterday where there was a ‘nature walk’. I set off and within two hundred metres there were three large rocks with something on top. I climbed up the path and found a memorial to some naval officer and a little temple with a golden buddha. Apparently, the local people thought these three rocks look like the bows of three boats, so they build a shrine to the founder of the Thai navy – here in the middle of an island, on a remote nature walk with no view of the sea, very strange. I continued on the walk for another kilometre or so before it got to a wooden bridge over a canal, but it was broken and blocked off. So, I returned back to the bike. It was very hot and humid and my clothes were sopping wet. When I got to the bike, I discovered that I had lost my red Easter Island dewrag! I was distraught. Of all my clothes this is probably the one thing that is irreplaceable. I won’t bore you with the trials and tribulations of trying to figure out where I had lost it, but I did retrace my steps looking carefully all along the path. When I finally arrived at the end, at the broken wooden bridge there it was laying on the bridge. I was elated, but now I had to walk back up the path to the bike again. When I finally rode away on the bike the wind felt wonderful as the moisture evaporated out of my clothes.

I followed a scooter with five people on it. I stopped when they did and asked if I could take a photo of them because you can’t do that in Canada, and they graciously said yes. Then I asked if they were from the island but they said France, whereupon I said you can’t do that there either. Later in the day, I followed another scooter with four, two of which were monkeys! One standing in front of the driver and one sitting on the back of the seat behind they two humans, peering around them trying to see where he was going. Unfortunately, I could not get a photo of that. 

The rest of the afternoon I hung around in the water at the main beach and then back in the water at my cabin. I went back out again to see the sunset and to have my last meal at the same restaurant and then to the room to get organized for tomorrow.

I really enjoyed my week of down time on the islands. It was a welcome break between tours and great to hang out on beaches and ride a scooter around exploring. My batteries are recharged and ready to go for the final stretch.