After an early breakfast, we boarded the truck for the transfer to Thong Sala pier, where we had seats booked with Lomprayah Ferries back to Koh Samui. While waiting on the pier for boarding, I looked for the cellular router we were relying on for our communication, and couldn’t find it. I remembered intending to pack it in the day pack we were carrying with us, but couldn’t decide if I just forgot to do so, or packed it somewhere else. After a moment of panic and confusion, I took back the suitcases, and we did not board the 11 o’clock ferry. A thorough search for the device yielded nothing, so I left Lilach and the kids with all our luggage in the shed on the pier, and walked to the Lomprayah office in town. I asked them if we could change the tickets (yes, we could) and used their wifi hotspot to call Smile Bungalows, asking them to look for the device. At 11:45 I finally heard back from them, saying that the device was not in the room. I figured I must have hidden it somewhere in the luggage.
I rushed to exchange the tickets for the 12 o’clock ferry, ran back to the pier, and we managed to board it at the very last moment. Turning the luggage upside down on the ferry, we still could not find the device. Seeing a missed call from a Thai number, I called back and – sure enough – it was Smile Bungalows informing me that they did find it in the om after all. I asked them to bring it to the Lompraya office in Koh Phangan, from where we’ll try to retrieve it later on. In Koh Samui we transferred directly to the airport. At the Budget counter we were informed that they upgraded us to a 7-seat full size 4WD SUV, and recommended that we go to Na Thon Pier for a car ferry.
On the way to Na Thon, we stopped at a seaside restaurant and had a good lunch. Using the restaurant WiFi we checked ferry schedules, and found out that we couldn’t book one with SeaTran, as planned, but Raja ferries seem to have ferries going every hour. We managed to find the Raja ferries pier, and while queuing for the 17:00 ferry behind a truck filled to the brim with coconuts, we uncovered some of the mysteries of the car, and managed to listen to downloaded music from my phone through spotify. On the ferry, going from the car deck to the upper deck, Tamar dropped her phone on the roof of a Durian truck, requiring a short climb to retrieve it. Other than that, the sail was quiet and we enjoyed the view of the small islands near the Surat Thani shore.
The car had a built-in navigation system, but our short drive through Koh Samui made us prefer Google maps. Fortunately, we downloaded some offline maps covering our intended route ahead of time, so we didn’t require the cellular router for navigation. We drove to the accommodation we booked in Khanom, but reached a restaurant by the sea instead of a hotel. The people at the restaurant never heard of the place we were looking for, bearing tge strange and quite distinct name “Ooy Le House”, but re-entering the destination into Google maps discovered it a few streets away. Upon arrival, we discovered a lovely house, with a lush garden and a couple of accommodation rooms and suites in it. The friendly owner informed us that she upgraded us to a larger suite, and ushered us into one of the most pleasant, and surely the most well-lit, suite in the history of hoteliery – a quick survey found no less than 22 (!) light fixtures on the ceiling. After we all took showers we headed back to the restaurant discovered earlier by chance, which turned out to be the recommended option nearby, for late dinner. Apart from the very good food, Daniel got his hair braided by the waitress.
At 5am I woke up, and found out that the email I had sent just before going to sleep was never delivered, since the WiFi was down. Therefore, the status of the conference call planned for 6am was unclear, and I didn’t go back to sleep. At 8 we had a gigantic breakfast by the orchids in the back yard, after which we headed out to try and organize a tour to see the pink dolphins for which this area is famous. Our first destination was a place advertised as a “tourist office” on the main street. Despite the official-sounding name, it turned out to be a dilapidated office of sorts, where someone with a phone and a desktop was trying, not very successfully, to contact tour boats and get something organized. He said he could book us a tour for the next morning, for 650 baht per person. The price didn’t seem unreasonable, but we decided to check if there were any tours going out that afternoon, with the morning tour as a fallback option.
Next, I searched google maps for “pink dolphin”, and to my delight found a point on the shore marked with “pink dolphin boat”, so we decided to check it out. After a 20 minutes drive, we turned from a narrow tarmac road to a narrower dirt road, running along the shore, and it seemed less and less likely that a boat pier would await us at the end of the road. But at the end of the road we did find ourselves near a shack by a very lopsided and shaky wooden pier, with several long fishing boats tied to it or anchored in the shallows around it. To our total surprise, one of the women on site spoke a little English, and ensured us that if we came back the next morning around 8am, we could get a boat that would take us out to try and find the pink dolphins. The cost would be 1000 baht for the boat, for a tour of around 90 minutes (similar to what we were told at the “tourist office”.
With that task completed in such a remarkable manner, we turned to the next attraction on our list – the Khao Wang Thong stalactite cave. On the way to it, we stopped at a peculiar “coral pagoda” with the symbolic name “Jedi Coral Rag”, which we (naturally) presented to the astonished kids as the original Jedi temple. Another stop on the way to the cave was to take a closer look at one of the rubber plantations scattered along the road. Thailand is the world’s largest rubber producer, and the Surat Thani province has vast areas of rubber plantations. We saw the diagonal peeling of the bark, with the rubber dripping along its lower edge, to a small metal clip at its lower end and into a small cup held by a wire. We learned that the volume of the accumulated raw rubber can greatly exceed that of the cup, since when it fills, the congealed rubber mass is turned on its side, allowing more tubber sap to flow in. The kids enjoyed the texture of the raw rubber and disliked its smell.
At the site of the cave, several rangers greeted us, and told us that entry was free, but we can leave a donation box outside, which we gladly did. A sign by the rangers’ shed described the attempts by entrepreneurs to start an iron mining operation in the cave after its discovery, and how this was blocked by the government, following public protest led by a local activist and educator, and the site was subsequently protected. One of the rangers escorted us along the 140 or so steps leading to the cave entrance. Along the road we saw some sun skinks, and at some point, stretched on the rock by the steps, a beautiful young black-tailed racer – Orthriophis taeniurus ridleyi. The ranger seemed as excited by the find as we were, and we all took pictures of it before letting it escape into a crevice.
Before entering the cave, the ranger gave us some flashlights (we left our own headlights in the car, of course), and turned some on the light system installed inside the cave. He gave Daniel a hand, and they led us through slippery paths, amidst beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations. It was soon clear why the iron miners coveted the place – in many of the halls the ceiling and the walls were covered with iron deposits, in some places actually resembling thick iron sheets. In addition to the interesting geology of the site, the cave was home to at least two different species of bats, which we watched up close. We also found a couple of interesting spiders, and a strange cave cricket.
Back in our room we had more WiFi woes, trying to call the Lomprayah office. Eventually I managed to get them, and after a couple of calls the nice girl I talked to asked me to call again just before they close at 5pm. I called again at 16:54, but someone else answered – a male this time. I tried to explain the situation all over again, but he clearly didn’t understand English. He kept referring me to the reception at Smile Bungalows despite my attempts to explain to him that they – Lomprayah – already have the envelope with the device. I hung up, frustrated, after a 10 minutes call that got me nowhere. Thinking whether to try again in the hope of catching the nice girl from earlier on, I noticed that I just talked to the reception of smile bungalows…
But god protects the fools – the nice girl was still there, and answered my call although it was already 17:06. Yes, they’ll send it on the first ferry in the morning. But I need to pay for it as cargo – it would cost 60 Baht. No, I cannot pay when I pick it up at Surat Thani – it has to be to paid to them. Can I get the hotel to pay them in Koh Phangan? Obviously that won’t work, as Smile is a cash-only operation. I’m willing to buy a full adult ticket online, but eventually she says that I can pay at Surat Thani, and ask them to send the 60 Baht to Koh Phangan… I’m ready to kiss her.
Back to yesterday’s restaurant for an early dinner, and the waiter us happy to see Daniel still with her braids. This time we have Issan dishes and a cocktail, and are rewarded by a nice tree gecko on the tree behind us. Back in the room, our kind host informs us that the Wifi had problems (as if we didn’t notice), but was now fixed, and our laundry returned. We repack for a couple of days in the jungle.
Family Trips 