TURTLE ROCK
Koh Tao in the 20th Century: Part 1
Excerpts taken from Naked Farang: Four Weddings and a Coup
After my time on Koh Phangan, I was already falling in love with Thailand, but it was Koh Tao that first sent me head over heels. It’s a love affair that has grown in degrees over the years, ever changing, constantly evolving. The journey has been one of discovery, of both a newfound soul mate and equally myself. While the attraction, like so many, was at first physical, over time spirituality has strengthened the bond. All the time, the little imperfections that grow into reasons for separation in relationships built on pure lust have served only to keep the object of my desires real.
That initial physical attraction of Koh Tao may be somewhat jaded in my mind now, but Thailand has so much more to offer than her superficial beauty. She is an intensely profound being who sweetly assaults all the senses and mesmerises with her charms. I am hopelessly smitten, and for that I will be forever grateful to Koh Tao.
When I first landed on Koh Tao’s shores, there was an air of playful innocence and vulnerability about her, like some mystical nymph lost in the woods. At only five by three kilometres, she was a waif of an island but voluptuous nevertheless. If you gave a traveller a blank piece of paper and then asked them to design their perfect desert island, many would draw Koh Tao. With a long stretch of white sand beach along one shore, protected by a coral reef that you can wade out to at low tide; with a clear turquoise sea, teeming with a rainbow of marine life; with numerous bays scattered around the island, one even boasting a shipwreck lodged in her reef; with a hilly interior of dense yet alluring jungle offering rewarding treks to stunning viewpoints; with three islands huddled together just off her coast forming an exquisite mini-archipelago, each with its own sliver of beach reaching out to touch its neighbours every low tide; and with enough sea between her and the next nearest inhabited land to make her truly remote from the cares of a quickly forgotten world; Koh Tao was a paragon of every traveller’s dreams. And thus this tragic Siren was cruelly and incontrovertibly destined to fall victim of her own beguiling allure.
In January 1995, Stan and I were far from being the first farangs to discover Koh Tao. A 1987 Lonely Planet Thailand guidebook that I found even gave it a mention in the section on Koh Phangan, which was at the time still considered an adventurous alternative to the booming Koh Samui. They had this to say: Some travellers are already looking for islands even further off the beaten track. Koh Tao even has a few bungalows now.
Koh Samui had become the most developed and visited of the east coast islands, something that was compounded by the commencement of car ferries in 1985 and the opening of its own airport in 1987. This had been followed by the inevitable overspill of the more adventurous to nearby Koh Phangan and finally the more remote Koh Tao. At least the islands of Phangan and Tao are too hilly to accommodate airports. In fact, Koh Tao is not much bigger than Koh Samui’s airport.
When I first arrived, Koh Tao was still considered the poor cousin of the east coast islands, yet it offered the most riches and couldn’t stay off the tourist map for long. Just a few years earlier, it had been merely a dive site for Samui-based diving expeditions. Now there were already a few dive shops scattered along the west coast and in Ban Mai Had, the tiny settlement that served as both port and capital.
Although connected to both Koh Phangan and the mainland town of Chumphon by small, slow and irregular ferries, it was still far-enough-out-of-the-way and hard-enough-to-get-to for it to be a destination rather than a transit point on a tourist trail.
There were only two ways to reach Koh Tao. Coming the popular way from Surat Thani, it was the third stop and thus least reached. Travellers who made it as far as Koh Phangan still had to brave another three hours across open sea in something that looked a bit like a boat that a child had drawn in the back of a car on a bumpy road on the way home from kindergarten. These boats were unreliable and only seemed to leave whenever the crew needed some whiskey money. Depending on the weather, boats also left daily from Chumphon direct to Koh Tao, but these took around seven to eight hours and occasionally sank.
Because of the time and trouble involved in reaching Koh Tao, most people who made it there ended up staying a long time. Either they found it hard to tear themselves away from the pristine beauty and soul-refreshing tranquillity that the island offered, or they were building up enough courage for the return boat trip.
This remoteness meant that close-knit communities of travellers would build up and there was time to develop meaningful friendships with the locals. Just as Pattaya attracts a certain kind of foreigner, the same can be said of places like Koh Tao. It’s not where you’re from; it’s where you’re at. While the island itself offered more than enough reasons to stay, it was the people who made it special. I made a lot of good friends there, many of whom I still keep in touch with.
Some people developed more than just friendships there, too. An English couple, Tim and Jo, met and fell in love on Koh Tao. They even had a Buddhist wedding ceremony in the tiny temple on the island. The local monk consulted the mystical powers that guide him and chose 6am as being the most auspicious time for the service. A whole gang of us made our bleary way up the hill to the temple to observe the happy couple being ceremonially blessed with a double-noose rope uniting them and holy water cleansing them. It must have done the job because they are still happily married with two kids. The reception was held on the beach with cake and champagne. It certainly made a refreshing change from booking the function room at a local hotel.
Tim and Jo are a great example of the kind of people you would meet on Koh Tao. They are both laid-back, funny and creative. I remember Jo once emerging from her bungalow in a pair of baggy fishermen’s trousers that she had somehow transformed into a one-piece creation. And Tim, I love to bits, even if he does have a strange penchant for munching on blocks of cheese. I wandered over to join him on his balcony one day where he was strumming away on his guitar. He asked me if there was anything I wanted him to play. As a part-time guitarist myself, one of my proudest achievements was working out the riffs and notes that, to me at least, sounded like Led Zeppelin’s Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You, one of my all-time favourite tracks, so that’s what I requested. Without a second’s hesitation, Tim proceeded to play it effortlessly in his own inimitable nonchalant style. Anyone who can do that is fine by me.
Paul Snowdon - Excerpts taken from Naked Farang: Four Weddings and a Coup
Related article – Turtle Rock: Koh Tao in the 20th Century Pt 2
Related article – Turtle Rock: Koh Tao in the 20th Century Pt 3
Receive weekly updates on all the latest from Naked Farang by joining our Facebook group: Click here to join or log into facebook and then paste this link into the address bar:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11498592846
