We woke up early, had breakfast and then started our hike up to the viewpoint at 7:45am (named Two Views as you can see the east and west coast bays). We first hiked past Tanote Bay Viewpoint which was 20 minutes of steep uphill. We carried on hiking to Two Views which took another 40 minutes of steep uphill. The viewpoint is the highest point of the island at just under 400 meters. It was quite a thigh burning hike up but the views were stunning. From one point we could see the port we arrived at and a few other coves.
We decided we wanted to keep walking so we found a path and hoped it would take us down to Sairee Beach which is close to Mae Haad (the port and main town on the west side of the island). It was a long walk down and the path was really gravelly. Not great for gripping when you are wearing flip-flops! The walk was really enjoyable and we always love walking through the dense vegetation. Pete took the lead as well as all the spiderwebs. Our legs felt like jelly when we finally got to the bottom.
We walked around Sairee for a bit and I really liked it. It is more built up than Tanote Bay where we are staying and the beach isn’t as nice but it had a good feel to it and lovely restaurants along a tree lined promenade.
We carried on walking around the bay to Mae Haad. This area is just crazy. It is so busy and the area where the boats come in is always overcrowded. We did need to go into a travel agent there as we need to do a visa run which means doing a day trip over to Burma. It is such a pain – we got a 30 day entry stamp when we arrived but we are in Thailand for 33 days so the quickest and cheapest thing for us to do is book a day trip to Burma and get a new 15 day entry stamp. Anyway we managed to book a trip trough a travel agent so we are all set to go on 2nd May.
We Carried on walking out of Mae Haad to find the Jax Trek, a trail that winds along the southwest coast towards the southern beach of Chalok Baan. The trail makes its way through a multitude of resorts only accessible to the residents by boat. Having eventually found the trail at the southern end of Mae Haad beach, we headed towards Jensom bay passing some beautiful coastline and smaller bays. Jensom bay is a cute Little bay privately owned by two resorts. It looked great but we did not want to stick around as they charge you to be on the beach.
From there we headed directly south for about a km passing a stunning resort called Bamboo Huts. They have individual luxury huts built onto the cliff face and some have their own private swimming pools and jacuzzi’s overlooking the ocean. This would be the perfect place to go on honeymoon! We carried on walking through Bamboo huts towards Sai Nuan Bay. The bay has some great huts for travellers and nature lovers looking to have some serious peace and quite. There was a fantastic bar built from driftwood right on the beach. The main deck went right up to the waterline. The trail started to deteriorate a bit and I’m sure we veered off course when we found ourselves scrambling over huge rocks next to the sea for about twenty minutes before reaching the next outcrop of land called Cape Jeda Gang. By now we were pretty tired. Pete looked like he had just gone for a swim from sweating so much in the scorching hot, mid-day humidity.
From Jeda Gang it was a case of heading east along the south coast. We found a small stall at June Juea beach and bought an ice cold water – water has never tasted so good! The next trail was very up and down for a few hundred meters, sapping the last of the energy out of us. With the final push we made our way into Chalok Baan beach. It is an incredibly beautiful bay lined with palm trees and rustic accommodation blended into the hills. We had planned to have lunch at the beach but unfortunately we did not have enough money with us as we had paid the deposit for the visa run (and we weren’t actually planning to book that today or walk this far!) It was a case of eat lunch here and walk back (about another three hours trekking) or catch a taxi back….easy decision. We had been on our feet for five hours, having done two of the islands major hike in one go and in half the suggested time. We didn’t even have the energy to barter for the taxi ride we just jumped in.
The drive back was a real pleasure with the wind cooling us down (the taxi is a truck that we sit on the back of). The last leg back to Tanote bay is hideous so we decided to make a video to capture the bumpiness which was a lot of fun although at one stage I nearly got my wind knocked out!
When we got back we headed straight for the sea and had a lovely little dip before eating a hearty meal of our staple, fried rice with chicken.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful. We bumped into an Israeli couple who stayed at Dreamland Resort in Koh Phangan at the same time as us so we had a chat to them. Then we just chilled out on our porch enjoying the great view, read our books (Wilbur Smiths Sunbird and James Pattersons Mary Mary). We decided to have dinner at 7pm tonight after the previous nights 6pm South African mozzie feast! After dinner we retired back to our bungalow for an early well deserved sleep.
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