Our trip to SE Asia is winding down and we are definitely moving into relaxation mode with our time here in Khao Lak. We were upgraded to a lovely pool access room here at the Fanari Resort, and so we have been able to take some time to just sit and enjoy the pool right outside our door when the sun is out.

We have had a couple of days where the weather has not been too co-operative, and one of those was a full rain out. We can still sit outside on the terrace as even with the rain it is still nice and warm, but we are not venturing too far from the hotel. It does provide for some quite time to catch up on some email and a bit of work and I managed to get done a few things to whittle down the backlog of things that would otherwise be waiting for me when I get back.

The forecast looked like it was going to open up a bit weather wise so we decide to rent motorbikes again and try and get in a bit of exploring. Now that we have gotten comfortable with a few new means of local transportation with the rental cars and motorbikes, it has allowed us to get out and see even more things than we could have on private tours and day trips.

There is an island north of here called Koh Koh Khao that is our goal for the first day, but we only get about half way before we see the dark clouds rolling in on the coast and decide that there is no point on riding towards the rain. We decide to try for a side road up to a waterfall, but the road deteriorates to just a muddy path fairly quickly and decide that  we should just accept defeat for the day. We did have a nice day while the sun was out though, and found a few quiet little beach stops along the way out.

The second day was much better. The skies had a nice bit of light cloud so as to not be roasting hot, and we did not see any rain all day aside from about a 3 minute burst right at the end but we were stopping for a drink anyway!

This time we ended up making it all the way to Koh Koh Khao. After about a 45 minute ride up the coast you come to a small town where we are told that we can catch a ferry across a small straight to the island. We are not exactly sure where to catch the ferry and because the town is small and out of the mainstream, most of the sighs are only in Thai, but we figure that the place is not that big we will just follow the shore until we find it. Our first guess seems good from the road and we turn off towards some boats, but it turns out to be a fishing dock, and we try to ask for directions, but our Thai is not that good, and the people’s English was not that good and after some hand waving a nice girl offered to escort us to the right place.

As we often find out here things are not often the same for the locals as they would be for us back home, and it turns out their definition of ferry is not exactly what we might be used to. The ‘ferry’ for us and our motorbikes is actually an old longtail boat that has a bunch of plank decking instead of the seating that a longtail might usually have. The boatman tells us it is 40 baht each (about $1.25US) to cross and then makes some gestures that we should climb aboard. The surf is rolling the boat a bit as we walk on, but the boatman drives our motorbikes about like it is no big deal and then sticks a bit of wood behind the tire so that they don’t roll around too much during the short crossing – no straps or ties or anything and I raise an eyebrow a chuckle a bit, but who am I to question something that they have clearly been doing for a long time.

The ride across is about 10 minutes and in no time at all we are unloaded on the other side and ready to go. The whole island is only about 30km long and there is basically one main road that runs down the center of the island with occasional branches off to some of the resorts along the beaches on the west coast, or off into the fields that cover the rest of the island. Except for a few small foothills towards the north east corner the island itself is mainly flat, and in reality is more like a big sandbar. I would say that 90% of the entire island is less than 10 feet above sea level.

The impact of low season is even high here as it is a bit more remote, and during our entire ride on the island I think we only saw other tourist one time, and other locals not a whole lot more. It was quite awesome to have the entire road to ourselves most of the time, and we would just venture off onto some of the side roads to check out the beach or whatever they led off to. Most of the resorts here were closed for the season, and either wrapped up in a sort of screen to keep the weather and sand out, or were undergoing maintenance in preparation for the next high season. We even saw a few places that clearly just had not been able to make a go of it and were getting beaten down by the elements.

We reached the north tip of the island and there is another ferry dock here where you could catch another longtail boat to another island farther north, but we don’t want to chance not getting back for the last ferry to the mainland so decide to just explore a bit more on the island we are on. The map shows a road that goes down the east side of the island in behind the foothills that are there, and notes a couple of waterfalls to see, and we figure that we have time for that. If the road is on the map, it must be good right? We don’t get too far down the road before it changes from concrete to grave and then to packed dirt with washed out sections, but we are still on the ‘road’ and still looking for the waterfall.

After bouncing around on the rough trail for a few kilometers we come to ‘the waterfall’. By technical definition it is accurate because there is water and it is falling – about 2 feet. At first we think it is a trick like the place we saw in Cambodia where the actual falls are just around the bend, but that is not the case here and farther ahead the road only turns into more of a goat path so we decide that the smart choice is to give up and go back. It is getting late in the day anyway, and we want to get back before dark.

After crossing back on the ferry and back down the highway towards Khao Lak we decide to ride to the south end of the area to where we stayed back in 2009 when we came with the kids. This area has gone through a lot of reconstruction from the 2004 tsunami, and then a ton of growth on top of that, and lots of places don’t look even remotely the same as just a few short years ago.

A few of the places are the same, and one of the restaurants we went to is still around – although closed for the season – and we get down to the beach where we spent time with the kids. It is nice to see the place that we have some good memories from and it makes us think of seeing them all soon when we get home in a few days.

We have one more day here that we plan to just take it easy and enjoy the pool and then it will be time to pack up once again to make the trek back to Bangkok and then the long flight home.

We have quite enjoyed our time in Cambodia, and I could see us returning to the coastal region again in the future, but with the weather turning against us all the signs suggest that a change of venue will give us a better chance of enjoying our last week in SE Asia. It is low season everywhere so we know that it comes with some chances of being rainy, but the forecasts for the south of Thailand while still scattered look more favorable than Sihanoukville where we were planning to go next.

A short bus ride back to Phnom Penh and a couple of one hour flights later we have landed in Phuket and are on our way to Khao Lak. We have been here back in 2009 when we came with the kids and quite liked the area so figured it would be worth some more exploration time.

Our hotel, the Fantari, is about a block from the beach, and has a lovely pool, so even if it rains a bit the chances of unwinding here are pretty good. There is even a massage place less than 100 feet away from our hotel room so that is the clincher for me 😉  They even have real breakfast here with a full buffet of bacon, eggs, fruit, bacon, bacon, and did I mention bacon?! Makes me happy, happy, happy.

Hopefully we get enough decent weather to go out and do a bit of looking around – even perhaps rent some motorbikes again, that would make Mrs. Columbus happy, happy, happy!

Our time in Khao Lak is almost done, and the last few days have been very laid back. We have spent the last few days here just hanging about the resort. We did go on a small hike up into the hills behind our hotel to see a waterfall and a few sights around here. We also wandered by an animal safari that is closed for the low season, but the animals and everything were still there and we got to see a bunch of elephants and some monkeys fairly close up.

We have also spent some time in the pool and down at the beach, and then the weather shifted and it has been raining for the last day or so.  It is still nice and warm out, and we are able to sit on the balcony and do some reading or a bit of work and listen to the rain and the surf, so not all that bad.  We have been here for 30 days now, and I figure if we have only had a couple of real rainy days then we are doing real well for the ‘monsoon’ season.

We are moving back down to Phuket tomorrow to spend a few days at Kata Beach, where there is a little more to do if the weather is off and a lot more shopping and stuff for the buyers in the group 🙂

Way back in the day, before Mrs. Columbus and I were married, she owned a futon.  I believed at the time that this was the most uncomfortable ‘bed’ man had ever invented, and was likely created by a father who gave them to his daughters so that gentlemen callers would be un-inclined to stay over.

I have however discovered that the futon is actually a much more comfortable variant of the asian bed.  The majority of the beds we have slept on here are of the similar futon style of a dense ‘mattress’ on top of a more western style bed frame or riser.  The net result looks similar to a western bed and is about the same height off the floor, but the similarities end there.

The asian bed I think has not evolved since Medieval times when they were more commonly used as torture items.  The bed itself is very firm, rating on a softness scale of somewhere between sleeping directly on a concrete slab and sleeping on a concrete slab covered by a towel.

Clearly the Asian people have adapted to this and find them rather comfortable, as they are a step up from the many people we see having a nap on the floor in the back of a shop or on the bamboo floor of the small salas (like a small gazebo) we sometimes see on the roadsides.  I however have not been able to adapt myself to this form of comfort, and look forward to my comfy bed back home.

Some of the places we have stayed have reasonably soft beds, but others not so much.  After spending a night in one of these beds you often feel like an elephant has been dancing on your back while you sleep.  Perhaps that is why the housekeeping ladies left us these creations to show us the firmness rating of the bed…

In this case the rating is 2 elephants – meaning that in the course of the night 2 elephants will gleefully do the cha-cha on my back.  We have had beds that were I believe rated as high as 5 elephants, but after about 3 it all seems the same to me.

Khao Lak is a much much more laid back part of the tourists zones that we have been to.  The area is really a zone of about a half-dozen long beaches spread out along a 20 mile stretch of coastline.   Different than most of the other beach areas we have been to, the main road (and therefore the town) does not go right along the beach – and in some places is about a kilometer away from the coast.   This means that most of the hotels are more ‘resort’ style and away from the bustle of the town, and creates a much more relaxing atmosphere.

We spend our first couple of days here doing just that – relaxing.  The hotel we are staying at is right on the beach and there are lounge chairs set out right on the sand where you can sit back under the shade of a palm tree and listen to the surf roll in and out.  There is also a nice large pool in the center of a large courtyard, and between the beach and the pool we are able to just lounge about and enjoy the tranquility of this place.

Because this is the low season, and it seems to be even slower here than other places we have been, there are very few other tourists around, and at times it feels like you have miles of beach all to yourself.  We discover a nice spot at one end of the beach we are on, and the kids spend a few hours just playing in the sand, writing messages, and splashing about.

For our third day here we decide to venture out past our hotel and go into the town area and check out some of the shops, another beach area, and one of the local markets.

Our first stop is at the Tsunami Museum and the patrol boat.  Thailand was hit by a large tsunami on Dec 26, 2004 at about 10:30 in the morning.  Khao Lak was one of the hardest hit areas of the country with about 80% of the casualties in Thailand coming from this area, and more than any of the other places we have been there are reminders all around of the events of that day.

One of the largest remnants is a large patrol boat that was washed ashore by the wave.  The boat was on patrol about 1/2 kilometer offshore when the wave hit, and it’s final resting place is about 1.5 kilometers inland from the beach.  The boat itself has a 6 foot displacement, so at the place where it now rests the wave had to be at least 6 feet high!!

All around this area are blue posts set into the ground warning of the tsunami zone, and also marking the estimated height of the wave at any given point.  The one pictured here is several hundred feet from the beach (you can see the water in the distance) and the height is marked at 5 meters (about 17 feet) – and at this point the drop down to the beach is also about another 3-4 meters.  It is staggering to think about a wall of water 3 stories tall moving directly at you, and it is hard to not look around you and think of the tragedy of that day.

After all that it is off for some shopping.  We do the usual browsing in the various vendor shops, and then take some time to go into the big street market that is here.  The market runs 3 days a week and Mrs. Columbus and the girls are rubbing their hands together with visions of bargains to be found….  We get to the market and discover that rather than a tourist market full of trinkets for sale it is actually more of a local market where the locals in the area would come to buy their goods, fresh meats and vegetables, or perhaps an afternoon meal.  We did try out a couple of items from one of the stalls, but after walking down the fresh meat aisle, it was hard to convince anyone to try some of the roasted treats 🙂

Back to the hotel for a refreshing dip in the pool, and then off to Jo Seafood Restaurant just down the beach for another great dinner.