path: root/jrnl/2006-04-22-beginning-end.txt

---
template: single
point: 7.4090692758064645,99.207916245987
location: Koh Kradan,Trang,Thailand
image: 2008/kokradan.jpg
desc: Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago. 
dek: I wasn't expecting much from Ko Kradan, but in the end I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.

pub_date: 2006-04-22T00:11:20
slug: beginning-end
title: Beginning of the End
---

<span class="drop">I</span> will confess to being a bit melancholy on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta. It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future.

After leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it's called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn't long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning.

I wasn't expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/landsendkolanta.jpg" width="220" height="165" class="postpic" alt="Lands End, Ko Lanta, Thailand" />The majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island. I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I've seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me.

<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/kolantasunset.jpg" width="180" height="240" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset, Ko Lanta, Thailand" />My overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there's another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it's heaviest at the north end of the island. The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed.

The next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/kohaisunset.jpg" width="178" height="237" class="postpic" alt="Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailand" />it only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind.

But after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/outsideemeraldcavekomuk.jpg" width="144" height="220" class="postpicright" alt="Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, Thailand" />For eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that's about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it's such a small and dramatically high enclosure it's nearly impossible to photograph.

Eventually the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I'd get to the other side of the island. Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland. The path actually did exist when I got closer to the tree line and in the end wasn't that long. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in most guidebooks so after chatting a moment with the American who owned it, I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach it began to pour. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zo&#235;, who had been on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as "more of a refugee camp."

So it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zo&#235;'s husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as Wally who runs Paradise Lost, Tong who cooks and looks after the resort and Ngu who also works at Paradise Lost.

Up until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/southbeachkokradan.jpg" width="230" height="173" class="postpic" alt="Southern Beach, Ko Kradan, Thailand" />I hadn't found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I'd hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.

Wally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Tong was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/tangkokradan.jpg" width="210" height="183" class="postpicright" alt="Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, Thailand" />One of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef.

The reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda. Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground.

Afternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand.

I got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I've ever seen. Other times I'd do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who's front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it's still impossible to make out the scales.

Whenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse's station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills.

Sometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona.

Closer into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue "eye" stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all.

I never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch. Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff.

<img src="[[base_url]]/2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg" width="170" height="220" class="postpic" alt="" />Eventually Tony, Zo&#235; and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally's sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I've forgotten also with a crew of three came ashore for two days and eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost. Unfortunately for Wally, because he isn't listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating there, but because they've already paid for the lodging their stuck down at the refugee camp. It's too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally <a href="http://www.kokradan.com" title="Paradise Lost Resort Information">has a website with contact info</a>, but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn't great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. Although I just showed up and got a room it's worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren't too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year).

I spent the evening eating barbeque and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time.

But like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. <img src="[[base_url]]/2006/kokradansunset.jpg" width="220" height="136" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset Ko Kradan, Thailand" />I didn't want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn't be missed. So after seven brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok.