Once again, an early start as today Sunday, will be a travelling day for us. Our driver will be picking us up at 8.39 am to drive us to the pier at Don Sak – just under 2.5 hours’ drive. Actually we were woken up by quite some noise outside our tree house and opening the curtains, we saw a whole family of monkeys; papa monkey and loads of little ones scrambling around while papa watched over them. I dared not open the screen to take pictures as I was afraid they would jump in our treehouse so the pictures below may not be too clear but it gives you an idea of what was going on outdoors!
Early morning playtime for the monkeys
papa monkey kept a lookout
Once we had breakfast, one of the staff came to pick up our luggage and by the time we were at the reception area, our driver had already arrived, right on time and we were on our way. We had spent two fun packed days at Khao Sok and now we were heading to some relax time on the island of Koh Tao.
We arrived just before 11 a.m. and that was the time that the ferry was supposed to leave so you can imagine I was quite stressed out. Exchanged our ticket voucher for the real tickets and our baggage was labeled with a pink label matching the pink sticker we had to wear on our t-shirts. We had a long walk on the pier to reach the catamaran where passengers were gathering. I was a bit in a panic as Gerry had to have his smoke and walked leisurely down the pier when 2 busloads of passengers arrived as well.
Eventually I understood the system – this catamaran was doing all three islands : Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. As Koh Tao is the most further island, all passengers for that island were asked to go on board first. We gave our luggage up front and it got stored under a big canvas in the front of the catamaran. Then those passengers for Koh Phangan went on board and finally those passengers for Koh Samui went last as they were the ones to get off the boat first! This ferry was doing a round trip, picking up passengers as we stopped at the islands.
Once we left Koh Phangan, we were out on open sea in the Gulf of Thailand and the waves were stronger that the ferry did quite a few low dips and high rises! This last leg of the journey lasted 1.15 minutes and most of the passengers were quite still although some plastic bags were passed around to some passengers.
Finally we arrived at Koh Tao and the pier was ever so busy – on one side there were passengers waiting to get on to the ferry and on the other side there were all the drivers holding resort boards names waiting for their pick ups.
There were six of us packed into and onto the pick up truck along with our luggages – luckily here the locals have respect for my grey hair as I was requested to sit in the cabin and because there was not enough space outside, Gerry squeezed into the back seat where a senior citizen couple were already seated.
After taking a winding road going uphill and down hill we arrived at our resort on the east side of the island. We checked in at the reception and our luggage was brought to our bungalow – here it’s all steps and stairs with beautiful tropical gardens surrounding the resort. Outside the dining area there’s the swimming pool and below that the beach.
Our bungalow is large and simply furnished – we will be exercising quite a bit here, walking up and down in this resort. But we can really enjoy our surroundings. We don’t have any monkey climbing the trees but we do have chipmunks- as yet haven’t been able to take pictures of them as they are too quick!
After having sorted out everything in our bungalow, we went down to relax on the beach. Gerry did go in for a swim but I preferred to sit and enjoy the view.
After Gerry’s swim we relaxed somewhat longer and this time we ordered the local beer for Gerry while I had a fresh coconut!
Round about 6 pm we decided to go back to our bungalow and shower – we had gone without any lunch today and our breakfast was at 7.30 a.m.
All the staff are ever so friendly and polite! We decided to have a Thai meal but as usual we ordered too much – anyway I enjoyed my spicy shrimp and aubergine soup while Gerry ordered chicken satay and salad.
By the time we finished our dinner, I was quite exhausted that when we got back to our bungalow I just had enough energy to brush my teeth and hop into bed – I guess the last 10 days have been quite strenuous making sure that our itenarary went off well. All Gerry had to do is enjoy all the different aspects of our trip! I was fastby 9 p.m.
