Koh Phangan

We arrived in Koh Phangan on February 1st and we stayed at a beautiful resort named Sarikantany on Leela Beach. It has beautiful bungalows, great restaurant, beach-side pool and a big screen TV room with unlimited DVDs (most movies still playing in theatres). Leela has a beautiful stretch of beach and is extremely quiet in comparison to the beach next door named Haad Rin; the party beach known for their full moon parties, buckets and DJ’s. It was nice to be able to walk to Haad Rin to party on the beach but come back to the peace and quiet of Leela. Our friend Josh flew out from China to spend some time with us again. We had a great time, probably too much of a good time as there were a couple of days spent recuperating from the night before. We met a lot of other travelers from all parts of the world and had a great 2 weeks there. Below is the dog we've been hanging out with; he has a lot of personality and likes to chill at the beach during the day.

It was hard to leave the comforts of Sarikantany but with Koh Phangan being so large, we wanted to spend some time on the other side of the island. We decided to come to Mae Haad Cove, an hours drive from Leela Beach, which is in a marine park and known for its snorkeling/diving sites. There is a coral reef just 150 meters offshore and if you simply stick your head in the water on the beach, you’ll see hundreds of fish. There is also an island called Ko Ma which is just a short walk along a sandbar which connects it to Koh Phangan, depending on the tide you may be walking through water. We’ve been extremely lazy for the most part, spending our days on the beach or lounging on our deck. We walked 2.5 km to town yesterday to use the ATM and stop at the store which we considered to be an extremely productive day.

I’m not sure how long we will spend in Mae Haad Cove, maybe just a couple more days and then move on to Koh Tao for a week. Then we’ll more than likely spend our last week in Koh Samui. We are now down to our last 2 weeks in the Thai islands and it will be hard for us to leave. We are both ready to start “traveling” again though and we’ve booked our flight from Koh Samui to Siam Reap, Cambodia for February 29th (when our visa for Thailand expires). We’ll more than likely spend a couple of weeks in Cambodia, traveling through the entire country and then moving on into Vietnam.