Leaving the Swedish Resort to KohMak Island

Today we got up at the crack of dawn to leave the Swedish resort to take a 2.5 hour bus ride to the southeastern-most point of Thailand where we boarded a boat to take us to the very remote island of Koh Mak. On the bus ride we passed a procession of 4 monks and their entire villages that they are associated with driving to the local temple because these monks just ordained and are going to be monks for the first time in their lives. In the procession of cars there were trucks with entire bands in the back of the pickups and everyone was yelling and having a great time celebrating the monks and their decision to ordain.

We stopped along the way at a grocery store with the intention of getting some water and supplies for the island… but all of us college kids decided it would be a better idea to buy booze for the island and lots of it… we bought 2400 Baht worth or booze (which is 80 bucks) but if we were to buy that much in the states it would have been at least over 200 bucks easy. We then got to the island and it has some of the most breathtaking scenery and an incredible setting. I am definitely coming back to this exact resort and staying for two or three weeks in the near future. The food is cheap the rooms are cheap and there are NO tourists at all. They said that the island of Phuket was like this 30 years ago before it was found as a tourist destination. We are sleeping in little huts that have mosquito nets so we can open the windows and have the nice sea breeze come into our little huts. The huts are placed so when the tide is in we are sleeping over the water and walk along little raised pathways.

We got the resort in the afternoon and we were given free time to chill and take care of some personal things that we all have been needing to do. I was able to update all of my journals and my blogs because we finally had internet and it was “good” enough to get onto sites that required more bandwidth. We had dinner provided by the university and it was very good in my opinion, other people in our group are not big seafood people and they have been raising their noses to lots of stuff. There are a few extremely picky eaters where many times they have just had rice and nothing else.