Koh Samet and Koh Tao
Life's really hard sometimes...
December 1998

This his is the point where I try (probably unsuccessfully) to make the reader jealous. Tropical Islands, lapping waters, and sand all over the place...

I'll quickly skip past the mosquitos, the lack of amenities, the other tourists and the the cat-eating lizards (no I'm not kidding - I'll come back to it, promise...).

No it's no good, I can't pretend the minor niggles spoiled it for me. I had an amazing time on the islands and would gladly go back there in a shot, should significantly more cash than I currently have land in my lap.

The first island I visited was Koh Samet, located off the east coast of the main bulk of Thailand, almost directly east of Bangkok itself. I'd wound up there after I'd agreed to share a room with an Aussie I'd met called Ben. We'd both been in the lobby on the Kao San Palace trying to get a single room (to no avail) when the clerk offered me a double room. I was going to pass as it seemed a little extravagant as there was only myself, but Ben overheard and offered to share the room and split the price. Problem solved!

Ben mentioned that he was in Bangkok for a few days until he went off to the islands for a lazy time, and given I had a week or so to kill until Lindsey turned up from Japan, I decided to go with him and get a little sun and hopefully, a little less smog.

So after a bone-jarring journey (mostly spent looking out the rear window of the minibus checking that my luggage hadn't detached itself from the roof) and a ferry journey into the Gulf of Thailand, we arrived at the island and tried to find a place to stay. Actually finding a place to stay was not a problem, given the dozens of hawkers and touts trying to persuade you that their beach huts were the nicest, well-placed, etc. Finding one that you felt good about was slightly trickier.

Thankfully Ben (a significantly more adept traveller than yours truly) was very good at asking all the right questions and even took care of the haggling over the price, something I only just about had a handle on when I finally left the country. So after dumping the bags, we headed off to the beach, a mere 30 or 40 feet from the door to our hut. Which came in rather handy after an evening spent drinking Sang Thip whiskey whilst watching a local fire-juggler down on the shore line.

Sang Thip is lethal stuff, and contains (according to rumour and hearsay I picked up) ampethamines, formaldehyde and God alone knows what else amongst the massive levels of alcohol designed to turn the human brain to cheese. It tastes not all that bad to be honest, and does have the amusing tendency to get you drunk from the feet up.

I was lying on a blanket next to our little table on the beach feeling a little sozzled, but okay, when I made the mistake of trying to return to our hut to go to the loo. I stood up. I swayed once. I feel headlong into the sand in a manner usually used by falling trees. In the end Ben dragged me back to the hut, which was kind of him.

The other main incident on Koh Samet was Ben, an English guy called Andy and I's decision to rent motorbikes and go exploring the island. Andy had already rented this ropey moped and had found some enormous lizard on one of the islands tracks and had returned to tell us about it. So Ben and I handed over our passports as a guarantee for a pair of scrambler-type bikes and we all headed off along the pitted and treacherous paths to find the reptile in question.

Unfortunately my bike had an annoying tendency to stall if you dropped the revs at all, so in the end I agreed to try Andy's moped, a decision I would come to regret about 10 minutes later. Arriving at the crest of a steep downhill section of track, Andy and Ben bounced and skidded their way down with relative ease, whilst I slowed to a crawl and tried to gently ease the moped down the slope. It didn't work.

The moped rapidly gained speed despite increasingly frantic wrenching on the brakes, which I suddenly realised just were not up to the task. Losing control completely of the juddering and groaning bike I shot down the hill and straight off the track, crashing through plants and bushes and grinding to a halt on my side in the remains of a shrub. The crash cut my leg but more worryingly at the time had smashed the plastic front wheel guard, thrown the handlebars out by 45 degrees, hammered the headlight back into the metal surround and twisted the footbrake lever up and over the heel rest. I fixed the brake lever and headlight surround as best I could and stuffed the broken chunks of the wheel cover under the seat, but just could not straighten the damn handlebars, leaving me to ride the moped back at an interesting angle.

Given it was Andy's bike and thus his passport riding on me returning the bike intact (excuse the pun), I was in a fair state heading back, although Ben and Andy had caught back up with me by this point, so I felt a little better. Upon arriving at where Andy had picked up the infernal machine, I parked it with the handlebars turned so as to de-emphasise the damage in the hope of decreasing the amount I would surely have to pay. However the grumpy little Thai bloke that owned the place barely glanced at the bike and simply handed me back the passport in a surly manner. I glanced at Ben, who smiled subtlely and we turned around and made to amble away casually, when Andy said: "Oh. So you don't mind that it's damaged then?"

Ben and I froze, stunned. The bloke glanced again at the bike and suddenly noticed the partially missing front wheel cover, and started complaining. Ben and I backpedalled as best we could and said it had just caught and snapped, and in the end I agreed to pay 500 Baht towards the repair, quickly handing over the cash and then legging it. Much of the rest of the trip back to the hut was spent with Ben and myself yelling at Andy, who maintained that those bikes were that blokes livelihood. The fact that they were death-traps which weren't remotely suitable for the terrain and had nearly done me serious damage seemed to have escaped him. In the end it only cost me a new scar and the equivalent of 10 quid though, so it could have been worse...

Koh Tao

So from the excitement of Koh Samet I returned to Bangkok to meet Lindsey from where we headed by train, bus and ferry to Koh Tao, via Koh Pha Ngan. I actually hired another motorbike on Koh Pha Ngan so Lindsey and I could have an explore of the island for the one day we were there.

You'd have thought I'd have learned, wouldn't you. Thankfully this time everything went smoothly, although the bikes habit of stalling on the shallowest of hills was a little less than endearing... Anyway, shortly before Christmas '98 we arrived on Koh Tao and headed in a local taxi (a battered 4x4 which you squatted in the open back of and tried to avoid falling out) to the far side of the island. Despite attempts by the driver to convince us it didn't exist, we'd had recommended to us a small resort and diving firm called New Heaven Diving located on a pair of adjacent bays on the east side of the island. The diving school was the first thing we found and from there we were shuttled by long tailed boat (see photo below) to the adjacent bay where the resort was.

The resort was a smallish family-run affair, the owner of which can be seen in the photo below along with one of other resort helpers (possibly named Kuhn - it was a while ago now). The fact that longtailed boat was actually the only way of getting to the resort was fine for most of our visit as the owner would happily ferry us back when we needed to go back into town or to the dive shop. This only backfired once, on Christmas day of all times.

After our first diving lesson in the morning, Lindsey and I had travelled into town to try and phone our respective families (oddly enough my mobile phone didn't work on the island) and had then stayed on having a pizza in a local restaurant. By the time we returned to the Dive shop it was closed and empty and we had to find someone to radio to the next bay to ask for a lift. The wife of the resort owner told us the owner had gone to bed and we would have to walk to the resort over the hillside.

Thus it was on 10pm on Christmas Day, whilst the rest of my family and friends sat about in Scotland, Lindsey and I trudged and beat our way through tropical rainforest in the dark with no real idea of where we were going and only a pair of rapidly dimming penlight torches for illumination. The fact that we'd found out that the resorts kittens had been eaten by a snake and their cat had been killed by a lizard was doing nothing to make us feel any better. Despite funny noises from the undergrowth and a lot of jumping and getting twitchy on our parts, we got back to the resort safe and sound.

A outcome that we doubted would repeat itself when we finally left the island and headed by ferry back to Chumpon, several days later. To cut a long story short an initially balmy crossing rapidly worsened leading to the entire compliment of passengers and crew donning life jackets and looking both terrified and nauseous as the 100ft long ferry was tossed about like a rubber duck in a bath. Forget crashing the bike. That crossing still ranks as the most terrifying aspect of this entire trip, as at points I genuinely thought we were not going to arrive at port...

But late, bedraggled and exhausted, we finally did, and after another interesting experience on the Thai Railways, we arrived back in Bangkok . My time on Koh Tao, with it's diving adventures (of which I unfortunately have no pictures), and tropical isolation was and is still one of the best in this entire trip. And that even allows for that walk home in the dark, being unable to equalise during diving thus damaging my hearing, and nearly getting hit by a speedboat whilst trying to surface. The poor instructor I was buddy-breathing with at the time was not so lucky, actually getting clipped and injuring his head and his hand. Nothing requiring hospitalisation thankfully.

© Barny Russell 2004