After doing much research in the many tourist offices of Trang, we decided on the cheaper option with 'Andrews Travel'. This we were told would be a minivan journey to the local port then a 40 minute longtail boat ride to the pier of our island, Koh Mook, at which we will have a motor cycle taxi waiting to transfer us to our resort. Little did we know that "Andrews Travel" should of been called "Trotters Independent Travel", the minivan turned up an hour late (even this is bad for Thai standards), but we evntually got on our way to the port. The longtail boat was waiting for us and we both managed to get on board without breaking anything or getting wet! We had a beautiful journey passing little islands and impressive limestone crops, it was a very calm crossing and we quickly arrived at Koh Mook pier. Disembarking on the other hand was quite the opposite! As the pier was busy our longtail boat had to moor up against the local ferry which was much bigger than our boat. We had to clamber up a good 4ft onto the local ferry and then across to the concrete pier. This seemed to be a good spectator sport for the locals! After a long walk down the pier with all our luggage we found that "Trotters" had let us down and no taxi was waiting for us, in actual fact there was nothing there not even any other tourists. We later found out if we had booked the crossing with our resort we would of been dropped right on our beach!! Luckily, a motorcycle taxi spotted us looking lost and ferried us across the island, over the dirt tracks and through the rubber plantations.
We arrived at our resort and were given a very welcomed welcome drink and shown to our bungalow. It was a lovely room and our bungalow was nestled in the trees of the rubber plantation, only a few minutes walk to the picturesque beach. We were here for the Christmas period and our neighbouring resort had a party on the beach on Christmas Eve, so we took a couple of beers down to the beach and gate crashed their celebrations. Luckily for us we got there just in time to see Santa Claus arriving on Koh Mook by speedboat!! He even had time to give us a rendition of "We wish you a merry Christmas".
We had a great Christmas day, very different from the norm and it made us think about our families and friends and of course Roast Turkey!!! We filled our day with some swimming and exploring the nearby rubber plantation. Our Christmas dinner consisted of 2 Mai Thai cocktails and as our hotel had shown off their catch of the day, a 10KG Marlin fish to us, we decided to have a bit of that.
Boxing day came and we were on the move again, off to a sleepy town called Satun and as always the journey was an interesting one at that. Longatil boat - minivan - 3 hour wait - Tuk Tuk - Bus - Tuk Tuk - KNACKERED!!
Satun is a quiet place on the Malaysian border, clearly just used for stopovers and not used to many tourists. Its quiet but very friendly, all the kids wave and say "Hello", we finally think we are famous or perhaps they are following our Blog or have heard of our legendary longtail exploits! We have spent our time here usefully, getting Malaysian money and getting our laundry done. Clare's bra was missing and we did wonder if a small Thai child was using it as a hammock, but we did eventually get it back!! Adam also braved a Thai Barbershop, it was a proper 'Sweeney Todd' style shop, too many sharp objects for his liking!
We are off in the morning to the Malaysian island of Langkawi, a proper ferry this time... or so we have been told!
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