Off the well-trodden track in Thailand
John Borthwick finds tranquil beauty and natural wonder just a short distance from Phuket and other tourist hotspots.
Each year 11 million visitors avidly polish Phuket, the “Pearl of the Andaman”. With ever more arrivals expected, here are several nearby escapes from the island’s excessive success.
The fantastic limestone isles of Thailand’s Phangnga Bay jut from the sea like sleeping dragons. Somewhere amid these zoomorphic snoozers you’ll find the twin islands of Koh Yao Noi and Koh Yao Yai. Sitting east of Phuket, west of Krabi and north of Phi Phi, they are worlds apart from these touristic moshpits.
A speedboat zips us out from Phuket’s east coast for a half-hour ride to Koh Yao Yai — Big Long Island — in the middle of Phangnga Bay Marine Park. It is 24km in either direction to Phuket or Krabi, and about 10 years time difference.
A longtail boat against the enigmatic upthrusts of Phangnga Bay. Picture: John Borthwick
There’s a concrete pier, a gaggle of fishing boats careened in the sun, a few Muslim schoolgirls and not a hawker or hustler, a bar or a tailor’s tout to be seen. A well-padded truck rolls us along a sealed road past villages, bush and rubber-tree plantations until we reach our resort, Koh Yao Yai Village, perched on a slope overlooking the mystical bay.
“Koh Yao Yai, the less developed of the two islands, was settled long ago by Malay and Mon people,” our local guide says — and that’s about the limit of his history lesson.
There are now good roads across its 46km length and as we cruise them it’s easy to see that the main industries are still fishing and boat building, plus rubber and coconut plantations.
Yao Yai is an informal place and our drop-in visit to a rubber plantation — the nursery of the world’s car tyres and condoms — and its little, hand-operated latex factory that’s run by Burmese migrants, is welcome.
It’s similarly easy for us to visit an offshore fish farm that becomes the source of the evening’s delicious lobster dinner.
Next day we have the choice of kayaking on the bay or some fairly unspectacular snorkelling (I go for the kayak), plus an afternoon massage.
Six Senses Yao Noi Resort. Picture: John Borthwick
Regrouping later beside the resort’s main pool, we slurp sundowners while watching the Jurassic riot of Phangnga’s dragon peaks in parade below a darkening sky. There aren’t too many sunset-with-sea-monsters vistas like this on Earth.
Next door, Koh Yao Noi — Little Long Island — is marginally more developed than its sibling, with a number of resorts including the stylish Koh Yao Resort (koyao.com) whose freestanding villas and spa pavilion gaze directly out towards the enigmatic upthrusts of Phangnga Bay. Last time I visited, the resort had a buffalo for a lawnmower and the freshest-ever baguettes for breakfast. I hope it still does.
The 12km-long island runs on slowboat time and boasts few beer bars or general nightlife beyond a cricket’s chirp. Just what some romantics still look for in a holiday. Sharing that mesmerising vista of the islands is the luxurious Six Senses Yao Noi Resort, where the pool villas seems suspended between heaven and the bay, and you find yourself daydreaming over them, asking “Why tear myself away?” (sixsenses.com/ resorts/yao-noi)
We’re carving across the lime-green waters of Cheow Larn Lake in a longtail boat. The karst hills landscape around us is a freshwater version of Phangnga Bay that we farewelled a few hours ago, some 100km to the south. This giant reservoir we’re on was created in 1984 to power Ratchaprapha hydroelectric dam and is now the liquid jewel of Khao Sok National Park.
The Khao Sok park sprawls across the isthmus between Thailand’s Andaman and Gulf coasts, with its 740sqkm domain of rainforest and lakes combining with adjacent reserves to form the largest wilderness expanse in Thailand, if not mainland Southeast Asia. Limestone peaks, their walls grained like petrified wood, rear from the water towards jungle topknots silhouetted against the sky.
The Thai beach scene is popular. Picture: John Borthwick
Even higher, sea eagles on snack patrol pivot in a thermal gyre. We come ashore at our lodging, the best of several “raft-house” resorts on Cheow Larn Lake, the luxury Elephant Hills Rainforest Camp (rainforestcamp.com).
We are stabled — in a very refined sense of that word — in a floating, tented camp that becomes our base for jungle walks, lake excursions and kayaking, plus excellent dining on crisp, barbecued freshwater gourami.
It’s time for a hike. I hear the boom of gibbons in the jungle and, luckily, spy one of our long-limbed cousins slipping through the trees. It’s much easier to spot a rioting tribe of long-tailed macaques as they do their no-net trapeze stunts, swinging and crashing through the canopy. The hornbills are far more elusive.
“There are plenty here,” our guide assures us. “Lies, damned lies and tour guides,” we assure him, with a wink.
Instead, we see dive-bombing fish eagles and massive hardwoods whose buttress roots could hide a small elephant. There are, in fact, wild chang — elephants — here, along with civet, leopard, pangolin and barking deer — all of them far too canny to be seen by a crash of late-rising, midday bush-bashers. However, canapes and bottled Chang, we are reassured, are sighted regularly each day around sundown.
Dusk falls and the bandsaw serenade of a billion jungle insects cranks up. Most extraordinary is the so-called “football stadium cicada” whose single note — as held by millions of the invisible critters — pans right around the lake in the aural equivalent of a Mexican Wave.
We sit overlooking the waters. To the sound of the jungle’s serenade-cum-Mexican Wave, the sun goes down, as do our sundowners — beautifully.
FACT FILE
Transfers for the Koh Yao Islands depart from Bang Rong and Ao Po piers, Phuket. Take a taxi from Phuket airport to the pier; negotiate the fare in advance or, better, have your resort arrange the transfer. Khao Sok National Park entrance is two hours drive north of Phuket airport.
