Koh Jum

Erin's new alarm went off at 7:45, she almost didn't wake up from it. It was going for about 30 seconds before it finally roused her. We got up at 8:30, packed, showered and got in the back of a pick-up to get taken to the boat at 10:00.

Cloudy again today.

Waited at the boat terminal. There are lots of mudskippers here, fish that can also breathe oxygen and can live out of water for periods of time. The flippers most fish would use to swim, they can use as feet to push and jump themselves around on land. They are very important evolutionary-wise too. They were very cool.

The boat left about 11:50. The boat goes to Koh Lanta, but makes a stop at Koh Jum.

When the boat got to Koh Jum (pronounced Jam), it stopped in the middle of the water, and a bunch of long tail boats from the various resorts on the island pull up beside the big boat and transfer passengers and cargo going to/from Koh Jum. It was quite a sight. There were four long tails pulled up along side, bags being thrown all over, people climbing all over, trying to get to the right boat. Erin and I were the only ones going to the Sun Smile Bungalows.

As we boated along the island, you could tell is was remote and quite undeveloped. A few bungalows scattered along the beach, with thick jungle on either side, hardly anyone on the beaches. It was awesome.

As we got close to our bungalows, I said to Erin that I'm so glad we came here. Even before we touched the island, I had found my paradise in Thailand 2008. A short time later, Erin said the same thing.

Our bungalow is awesome. Very big, just off an amazingly quiet, serene, beautiful beach. The bungalows have no power during the day, at about 5:30, they start up a generator. We paid 500 baht for our bungalow.

Once we settled in, we went to the beach, Erin tried to sunbathe in the partly cloudy skies, I snorkelled and saw a massive school of fish, thousands of them, a black mass. Awesome.

After snorkelling, I laid in the sand and fell asleep. The day got cloudier as the afternoon went on.

After the sun went away completely, we went to the restaurant, Erin updated her diary (she hadn't updated it since Feb. 14), and about 6:00, we had supper, amazing barracuda. We had the last two fillets.

We then hiked to the road behind the bungalows to find a thriving local island community, houses, shops, motorcycles. Nothing touristy. We hiked a kilometre or more to another bungalow for dessert, then back to our bungalows. It was dark, and there's certainly no streetlights, bought I brought my torch.

At night, you can see phosphorescence in the water as the waves come to sure.

This island is even less developed than Koh Lanta was 5 years ago. On our stretch of beach, which is perhaps 1-1.5km long, there are three small bungalows. One of them isn't even open now. I'm sure in 5 years time I wouldn't recognize it anymore. :-(