South Thailand

Three weeks, two coastlines, and no plan beyond a scooter and a ferry schedule. We went in April, at the tail end of the dry season, looking for the quiet version of Thailand that everybody says no longer exists. We found it twice.

Koh Kood was the surprise of the trip. Every write-up we had read called it pristine but crowded, which may be true in December and was not true in April. We got warm flat water under the coconut palms, a dozen people on the whole beach, and one scooter loop around the island that we rode most days with no destination in mind. At Ao Salad the fishing pier had laundry drying over the water and copra laid out flat in the sun. Nothing there was arranged for visitors, and that was the appeal.

Bangkok sat in the middle as two days between islands. We spent most of them at the Grand Palace with our heads tilted back, looking at gold leaf and glazed roof tiles that carry on further than you expect them to. It was the only part of the month that felt like a city.

The other coast changed the register. From a longtail boat in Phang Nga Bay the karst towers look unreasonable, sheer limestone stapled with jungle and dropped into turquoise water. A storm front turned the whole bay to ink for ten minutes and then cleared. From Koh Yao Yai and Koh Yao Noi the same towers sit on the horizon like a filed row of teeth, and we reached them on scooters instead of boats. We passed minarets over fishing villages, a water buffalo holding up the only road, and a pool that nobody else was using. Phuket and Krabi are twenty minutes away by boat, and nobody else appears to have worked that out.