Anthong Marine Park (July 24)

I got up early to pack up my bag, eat breakfast, and be ready to leave at 7:15am for my day of kayaking. Not many people seem to use the gym here, so the hotel manager asked me at breakfast why I did not go to the gym this morning. I ran into a Swedish solo traveler at breakfast from Dalarna (where they make the painted horses). I talked to him a bit while I was waiting for the shuttle for kayaking to arrive, and he showed me some pictures from a hike to a waterfall that he had done. Once the shuttle picked me up, there was about a 20 minute drive to the southwest corner of the island where we met our ferry. It was nice to get out of the touristy areas on the eastern part of the island, the scenery on the drive was much more similar to what I was used to from northeast Thailand. Once we got to the dock, we boarded the boat and started traveling out to Anthong Marine Park, where we would be kayaking. Our guide for the day was Markus, from Germany, who, with lots of tattoos, a long beard, and big earrings, seemed like the type who would like living at the beach. The tour was very professionally run. Markus explained everything in both German and English, since about half the people on the boat were German, we were split into two groups, the German group and the “everyone else” group. The ride out to the islands was pretty bumpy. It had actually been raining when I got up in the morning, but fortunately that had stopped and there were just low clouds.

Arriving at our morning kayaking location

Once we got to the islands, the Germans went kayaking first, while my group went snorkeling. The visibility was not great, so the snorkeling wasn’t too impressive, but I saw some fish. I also managed to stab my thumb on some very sharp sea urchin. Next it is our turn to go kayaking, which I enjoyed much more than snorkeling. I shared a kayak with a woman from New Zealand. We kayaked along some rocky islands, and also did some kayaking into caves! We went in one place where we kayaked through a small tunnel, which then opened into a big pond surrounded my rocky cliffs. Then we got back on the boat, and ate lunch while we motored to the other end of the marine park for the afternoon’s kayaking. The Germans went kayaking again first, and the rest of us hopped onto a longtail boat that took us to the shore and we did a short hike up to a viewpoint. On one side, you could see the islands in the Marine Park spread out, while on the other side, you could look down to the Emerald Lake. This lake is where part of the movie The Beach was filmed, I have not actually seen it, but many people have mentioned it to me. After the viewpoint, we climbed down to the lake and then back up again and returned to the beach for our turn kayaking.

View from top of hike

Another view, with our boat

At the emerald lake

 The second kayak trip was similar to the first, lots of rocky coastlines and some cave kayaking. Then back to the boat, and we motored back to Ko Samui. The weather was overcast for most of the day, which meant the colors weren’t as brilliant as they might have been in the sun, but it was nice because it was not too hot. I think that the hike was the highlight for me, but I also really enjoyed the kayaking. Once I got back to the hotel, I picked up my bags to head up to Bo Phut, a town on the northern part of the island, for the second part of my stay on Ko Samui.