Koh Kradan & Koh Bulon Leh
Thailand, 2014-01-27 12:17 by Laerke
There seems to be even more eagles here on Koh Kradan, but we don’t see them as close up as we did not Koh Ngai because we don’t live as high up here. Here we are very much living at beach level as we are camping only a few meters from the high tide mark. On our first morning here I woke up to the sunrise, peeking out of our tent I saw the big golden ball rising out of the ocean and a little later the sun bridge paved with the purest gold extended right down to the front of our tent. Pure beauty.



We are camping at the National Park in one end of the beach. There are a few rooms available and some tents for rent as well as toilet and shower facilities. The rangers at the National Park Office here are nice and completely let us go about our own business. As we brought our own tent and already had a National Park ticket from our visit to the Emerald Cave we only pay 50thb per person a night to camp.



The beach and the water here is some of the prettiest I’ve seen in a long time, and the snorkeling is pretty good too without being amazing. However it is fun to snorkel around with the many Banner Fish that have made these reefs their home and all the time a Sergent Major Damsel Fish or ten would follow me around. I enjoyed the company of these curious little fish. They are always quick to approach snorkelers and in some places they do get feed a lot of bread and rice but here I didn’t see anyone feed them and still they’d follow you around and sometimes swim up and sort of look into my mask. Funny little fish :)



We have had almost all our meals at Paradise Lost, a Hawaiian/Thai owned bungalow and restaurant place in the middle of the island. I believe it is the oldest place on the island, and we discovered that they have the best food at the best prices, plus the whole place is very friendly and welcoming. From Paradise Lost it is a short walk to Sunset beach, a small and really pretty beach.





From Koh Kradan we hopped on a speedboat that took us an hour south to Koh Bulon Leh (they locals seem to call it Bulone though). Koh Bulon Leh has a local population unlike Koh Kradan and Koh Ngai, on Koh Kradan we’d actually started to miss Thailand a bit, as lovely as the island was it sort of lacked some Thai-ness it felt like it could have been any tropical island anywhere in the world. Here on Bulon we feel like we are in Thailand again, it is Chinese New Year now which means a couple of holidays and there is a big group of Thais here camping and yesterday the school held a big sporting day kind of event for the kids. There is music, kids dressed up for some dance for the sports day and the thais camping are having a great time – they’ve set up a big kitchen and there is always some ladies cooking, and all afternoon today a card game has been going on and a lot of 20 baht notes are changing hands over there :)

Other than the locals and the Thai campers this island seems to attract a very interesting crowd. At Pansand resort, the oldest resort on the island, retired Europeans return year after year and the place is completely booked out. Down at Panka Bay a 10 minute walk from the main beach a small French colony has settled it seems, this has caused a small bakery to spring up – yay! A very notable member of the French colony is Philippe an extremely tan older man in an extremely small (homemade?) G-string. He has claimed a little corner of the beach as his own complete with a C Philippe sign, hammocks, a small kitchen and hand carved coconuts. Here he hosts petang games for his fellow countrymen. A few barefoot, sarong clad hippie types can be found walking around the island as if they’ve been here for years – which they might have!




Koh Bulon Leh’s police station