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Diary 11 - by Hanna Holcroft

I first heard about Koh Phayam from Bee - my Dad's sister. Bee visited Koh Phayam several Christmases ago with my cousin Ned. The story went: Koh Phayam was one of the last tourist discoveries and was therefore much like some of the other now popular islands were 15 or 20 years ago.

Bee was right and because of this fact I am almost loathed to write about it. I am sure an increase in visitors will be great for the local economy but not for the beautiful environment we saw.

Koh Phayam Beach

We left Ranong on the slow boat, it was 150 Baht a ticket for Gavin and I and free for Tehya - it took just under two hours to get there. It was a really pleasant journey.

The boat was old and definitely not comfortable with hard wooden seats - Tehya did her usual trick and fell asleep within about 10 minutes. She was laid out across my body - from my chest to just passed my knees so I made a kind of human mattress….. it was not very comfortable but nice at the same time.

The scenery was dramatic - the coast of mainland Thailand was like a huge green mountain range of lushness, reaching up into grey misty/rainy skies. Along the coast were many small islands and further out to sea there were larger ones. It is impossible to tell which are Thai and which are Burmese.

We passed the island which holds the Andaman Club and you could see the golf course, eventually passing Koh Chang and then reaching Koh Phayam.

Youngsters at Koh Phayam

After Tehya woke up I sat up on the side of the boat to watch the ocean slide by and I saw hundreds and hundreds of huge jelly fish - they were bigger than dustbins with massive bulging tentacle bulbs floating under them. I had images of us all getting stung in Malaysia and sat hoping we were not about to experience the same (we didn't).

When we got to the island we were dropped off at the only pier. We walked along it and straight into a very small village, a huddle of little shops selling odds and ends - cafe's and a few small bars.

There were several motor bike taxis but we had no idea where we wanted to stay. We got approached by a young boy who told us he worked for Vijit Bungalow and said he could get us a free ride there. We took him up on his offer.

We wove along a very narrow road that was well concreted and then onto a smaller road that was definitely not well concreted - we carried our bags between us, Gavin had the large one, I had a small one and Tehya. A tourist staying at Vijit helped out with the third bag.

Low tide at Koh Phayam

Vijit has a really beautiful spot on Buffalo bay beach - it is in the centre of the beach and the bungalows are surrounded by trees. When you look out to sea you can appreciate the shape of the bay - to the left the mangroves and to the right the bay sweeps aroundÌý to rocky beaches and forested hills.

The set up is very attractive - the bungalows look pretty and the restaurant is right on the beach. We got offered a room for 400 Baht - it was more than we really wanted to pay but decided it would do until we could orientate ourselves with the island. The room we rented was just back from the beach but still had nice views and a big balcony which Tehya was pleased about.