As we prepare to depart from one island paradise for another, it seems proper that we fill you all in on our time in Haad Khom,  Koh Pha Ngan. There’s been a lot of hammock swinging, reef snorkeling, sunbathing, chess playing, storm watching and fruit shake drinking going on. This is where we spent most of our time:

Yesterday, we decided to break the blissful monotony of our island life and go for a trek over a small mountain to Bottle Beach, just a couple of bays over.  We’d been warned that it was quite a tough jaunt through the jungle but we were confident that our able, young bodies could make the 5 hour round trip no problem.

The walk was beautiful. The path took us into the belly of the jungle, along mountain ridges, across streams and out on to rock faces being battered by the ocean.

We saw all sorts of wildlife: a monkey, a snake, a monitor lizard and to my dismay, a multitude of insects. These are just a few of the thousands of red ants that made the walk a little more “interesting”. Needless to say, I didn’t take these pictures.

The only problem was that the path itself seemed to dead end and although we could see the beach that we were trying to get to about half a kilometer away, we couldn’t get at it due to thick jungle on one side and a cliff on the other. So, after three hours of hard slogging and the beach in sight, we had to turn around a go back, never reaching Bottle Beach. That didn’t really matter… it’s the journey not the destination right? We made the return trip back to Haad Khom in record time (that might have had something to do with the impending darkness) and made it home just in time to catch the sun set.

Tomorrow, if we can finally tear ourselves away from here, we are heading west and will hopefully make it to Krabi, a town that is a jump off point to some of the west coast islands. The next day, we will head on to Koh Lanta.