Ko Libong

Going back over the past week....

After the last time on Ao nang on my way back down the coast I headed to Ko Libong to meet up with Chris and Helen who are over here for 3 weeks. They were touring some of the more southern islands but  a lot of them were still closed because the tourist season hadn't officially started yet.

I went at the small fishing town of Ban Chao Mai, just around the cornet from where I stayed at Had Yao.   I had to take the taxi boat over to the island with all the locals, so this meant I had to park my bike somewhere. When I was asking around about where to go for the boat a Finnish guy appeared and helped me translate and pointed me in the right direction, he also said I could park my bike in front of his place. So I moved my bike over there, unpacked everything and realised I didn't want to take everything over to the island. I asked if I could store some stuff inside while I was over on the island and they kindly let me. Thanks Ola and Pat!

Then it was off to the long boat where there was a bit of confusion over what exactly was going on, mostly on my part. I ended up paying 60baht which is triple the locals price, still, that's only $2. There were a couple of locals sending there bikes across too but that looked like it cost 470baht according to the sign. Once I got on the island it was a scary mototaxi ride to the resort without any gear and clutching on to my luggage. The resort was very good, very quiet, and the restaurant was open whenever we wanted. There was hardly anyone about on the first day, but some more tourists appeared on the second day, and a lot of staff materialized on the second day for the clean up in preparation for the peak season.

The beach at the resort.

The bungalows were set back from the beach about 20m or so and along the beach were a few deck chairs and huts. All for only 600baht a night, but the normal price is around 1000 I think? Much beer was consumed anyway.

The island near the resort

On the second day I hired a snorkle and we waded out to this island and looked around. I have some video that I took with the gopro that I haven't edited yet, but the water wasn't too clear so it's hard to see a lot of the fish and coral. But here are some photos from it:

The rocks.

My trying to work the camera.

After that short snorkeling trip we ate some lunch, then Chris had hired a bike so it was a few trips to get to another part of the island to go on a big Dugong searching mission. We went to this spot with the  swiss cyclist who was camping out at the resort as he had told us he'd seen some Dugongs there (the story changed to one dugong though, and that was about a week ago). But we didn't see any, and I just got tired from swimming and cut feet from sharp rocks.

Lovely photo of Chris, and Helen too.

Bonus colourful photo

And now I've just edited this bit in the bottom instead of adding a new post....

After the resort it was time to head back to Trang, which involved a Mototaxi, a boat, my motorbike for me, and a failed bus and then a local ute coming to the rescue for Chris and Helen. 

Photos form the mototaxi ride:

Forward view from the tuktukmototaxithing.

Looking back. With the scowling girl.

This is a close to a smile that the little girl got.

I got back to Ola and Pat's place and had a quick chat about where I've been and where I'm going. Ola has been in Thailand for 3 years working on his boat in this tiny fishing village. Obviously he's in no rush to get out. After I packed up my bike I waved Ola and a few locals off as they were heading to the local hot springs (70 degrees!). I'd been a while so I thought I'd better get a move on to get to Trang to catch up with Chris and Helen. However, as the bus from the ferry only runs when it's full and they were stuck until more people wanted to go to town. They had been waiting for an hour and no one else had showed, eventually some local girls came to the rescue and they jumped in the back of a ute heading to Trang.

Helen would also like to inform everyone that she is better at life than Chris.