Koh Phayam
Island living, at last
As soon as we could find a seat on that sweet Nok Air plane, we were on the move. Smooth sleeper train from Chiang Mai straight to Don Muang Airport in Bangkok (the old one that it’s now used for internal flights), flight over to Ranong, a mini-van to the pier, and a speed boat to Koh Phayam. Easy peasy, we were pros by now.
We picked this island for our week in the islands, and so glad we did. No tarmac, and no cars, just empty beaches and nice food. Thailand has a million islands, and picking one can be a daunting task. We were trying to get away from the usual ones, with their high-rise hotels, and thousands of tourists, and took our chances with Koh Phayam. Great pick.
The moto-taxis are waiting for you at Koh Phayam pier, and two of them prompty loaded our backpacks in the front, and ourselves in the back. It’s a quick ride to the guesthouse, and something caught our attention on the way.
Monks, a lot of them. We spotted them on our moto-taxi ride to the guesthouse, with tents set up along the beach, close to their temple, appropriately called Wat Phayam. They would play an important role over the next week (and probably more) but we wouldn’t know that for a couple of hours.
Our reservation was lost, a bummer when you’re travelling for a full day, but they were quick on their feet, and fixed it pronto. We got our sea view bungalow, and it looked pretty sweet. The bungalow, not the sea view.
This part of the island, as far as beaches go, is the least interesting of them all. Something we would find out the next day.
I went out for a walk on the beach, it was low tide, the beach gets a bit muddy and has a ton of rocks. A quick dive turned into a cut on my feet. Not a big one, mind you, but it was bleeding a bit, and stung like hell with the sea water. I kept on walking, though, and soon I was at the monk’s camp.
While taking some photos I met Mook, one of them. He saw the camera, and had a camera of his own that wouldn’t turn on. I tried to help, but I guess sand inside a camera is never easy to fix on the spot. We started talking.
His english was spotless, and he was a former art director, turned monk by a series of personal events that led him to the monastery.
He also took care of the injury on my foot, and then I left, but not before he invited us to see the meditation walk, and I should feel free to take photos. What more could we ask for our first day on the island ? Blue skies, fluffy white clouds and orange robed monks ? Perfect match.
That would be happening in a short while, so I limped (no, not really) to the bungalow, and we were soon back at the monk’s beach, ready for another experience. So far, these were the coolest photos I had managed to shoot while in Thailand. I liked the feeling.
Coming from an amazing week in Chiang Mai, with a guesthouse as cool as Sri Pat, the accommodation in Koh Phayam left us a bit sad. The place was out in the middle of nowhere, the people there seem like they really don’t care about the costumers, and the bungalows, though cool, were so close to the next one that you don’t get a lot of privacy. No hot water in them, you have to go to a shared shower to have that luxury. The bungalow was good for a good night’s sleep and the food, truth be told, was delicious.
They made the best Panang Curry in the country, and a very good Garlic & Pepper chicken too.
On paper the place seemed nicer. They talked about eco-this and eco-that, and organically grown vegetables, but you have to see the vegetable patch only once to start doubting their commitment to all that eco-stuff. You do get electricity 24/7, something not available at a lot of places, but.. meh.
As soon as the sun rose the next morning, we rented a motorcycle, and set about discovering the island. And, boy, were we glad with the outcome. The place is all we could have wished for after all. The roads are made of cement, and everyone’s riding a bike. No gas stations too, you get your’s from whiskey bottles.
You can have breakfast (and all other meals, really) at one of the places scattered around the island, and there’s a few of those, and be on your way.
You’ll ride through the forest, and at the end of the road there’s always a beach. And all the beaches were nicer than ours. You’ll get miles of white sand, and not a lot of people. It was the high season, and we smiled every time we thought about that. There’s a few people near the bungalow places, and their restaurants, but we always managed to find a front row spot in the sand, looking at the sea.
You can go from one end of the island to the other in thirty minutes (and that’s a looong ride) and settle down. There’s always a restaurant or bar, where you can sit and enjoy another Chang, or a coconut shake, and have some food. Go for a swim, and have another drink. Pick up the motorcycle, and move to the next beach. Repeat. We would stay there for hours, Kindles in one hand, a drink on the other one. And then move on.
This would soon turn into our routine: get up, get on the bike, ride around, swim, drink, eat. We would return in the evening, ready for another session of abuse by the staff at PP Land, and get some sleep. It’s a really small island, we soon mastered the road system, and had our favourite spots. The Sun, Long Beach,…
One of the craziest we found is called Hippy Bar. At first, walking along the sea, I thought it was an abandoned tree house. It looked deserted, and pretty much ready to fall down. A photo had to be made and, as I got closer I could see movement inside. It was a bar. A real one, still working. It was time to go in and have a drink. The guys who work (live?) there could have been found back in the 70's, pretty much wearing the same outfits. The way they acted around girls also seemed like something from a bad movie from the 70's, by the way.
One thing that’s hugely annoying is the fact that both locals and tourists use parts of the beach as a highway, trying to cut shorter an already short road trip, and moving through the beach to shave a couple of minutes off a cool ride anyway. Hard to understand, even harder when there are numerous signs warning against that.
Every day there’s a couple of ferries that dock on the pier, carrying the supplies for the island. It was, at least for me, one of the highlights of island living. We would go there and watch the hustle, tourists boarding the speed boats while cases of beer (and other less essential supplies) were being unloaded by the locals. There was always a photo to be made, and it was great fun trying to interact with them.
Also most of the days, when we were getting back to our bungalow, we would stop by the monks and have a chat with Mook. Most of the times we couldn’t even spot him straight away, but he would always see us and call us out. We’d get off our bike, stay with him for a while, and be on our way. Things couldn’t get much better than this.
That’s how we came to know they were there for ten days of the year, and we had five of those on the island. How lucky can we get ? We would also find they were leaving on the same day as we were. We asked him at what time they’d be leaving, the photos of a hundred orange clad monks in that pier already dancing on my mind. We had arrived by speed boat, as most tourists do, and were thinking about doing the same thing to get back to Ranong, but quickly changed our plans and decided to take the slower ferry. We had time on our hands, and this would be the perfect way to end the week there. Riding a slow ferry through the archipelago, in a monk filled ferry. Perfect.
We were still not sure we could get on board, as Mook told us the ferry gets pretty crowded with them alone, but he also said we should be ok, there’s always place for a couple more. No worries. We were having fun anyway.
When the day came, we woke up really early, called the moto-boys and were at the pier a bit before the set time. A bunch of tourists were already getting on their fast boats. As usual Mook was the one that would see us first, and told us we should move to the end of the pier, as he tried to find out about the possibility of travelling with them. It was a quick affair, and soon we boarded the monk boat, with over a hundred of them, and maybe ten of us foreigners.
We moved to the front of the boat, and rode there all the way to Ranong. It was a much nicer experience, and we would do it again, even with no monks on board. Getting out of the island on a speed boat was just not the way to end our week there. It felt much more appropriate to move at a slower pace, taking the views. We needed some time to deal with the sadness of leaving the island and the ferry gave us that time. The monks made it all even more special, as they had done during our stay there, and they had our backs all the way to the city.
Their time on the island had come to an end, and so had ours. We would miss Koh Phayam, and we would surely miss them.
More photos ? Sure, head on down to maiquemadeira.com. Enjoy.
