"The Island"

The bus was scheduled to arrive at 6am in Ranang but of course it arrived early…an hour and a half early. Of course a tuk tuk was waiting to take us to the ferry terminal. Once at the ferry terminal we had to wait until 9:30am for the ferry. We have been debating about whether we should name the island we went to or not and have decided to leave it at just “the island”. Mainly because this island is not developed, doesn’t have electricity and not a lot of tourists. This might not appeal to some but for us it was paradise and we don’t want to encourage too many people to go there and spoil it for the rest of us. Sorry. But if you really are interested in going somewhere good, contact me individually and I might help you out…for a price.  We arrived on the island around noon. There is no ferry terminal on the island so the boat pulls up to the beach as close as possible and you jump out and they pass you your bags. Everyone gets dropped off individually and since our guest house was the last one on the island, we were the last to get dropped off. Once we finally arrived, we were not disappointed. Our part of the island was a small cove with only 3 guest houses on it, and ours was the best one. We had called ahead and made reservations, which turned out to be a good thing because another couple that got off with us wanted to stay there too but they couldn’t, because they didn’t have reservations. Our bungalow was ocean front, about 20ft up on the cliff. The view was amazing and the sound of the waves would lull us to sleep every night. The beach was big and beautiful but not in the traditional sense. It’s a marble beach which means it’s a mix of black and white sand, and the black sand weighs less than the white sand and it leaves a beautiful marble effect when the waves roll in and out. The water looked cloudy due to the black sand, but in fact it was crystal clear. The sun was shining and it was hot! The first thing after checking in we headed to the beach of course. We spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing in the hammocks on the porch in our bungalow. It was very peaceful and quiet. As I mentioned there is no electricity on the island but they do have generators that run between 6pm – 10pm, but after that again it’s lights out. This meant an early night for us every day but that’s okay as we were very tired from not doing anything.

The next day I spent some time on the beach while Andrew went to explore the rest of the island. He found a bakery which bakes fresh goodies every day. The next day we went there for breakfast and had a wonderful breakfast of homemade fresh bread, homemade jam and fresh coffee. It was delicious. Again, we spent the rest of the day swimming and on the beach. We stayed on the island for 4 days but it really flew by. The past few months had been fairly hectic and it was nice just to hang out and enjoy the sun and the beach. This is definitely a place we want to go back to. From there we took a ferry back and booked a bus to Phuket.