Of course I had picked the day with the worst weather to go on a boat trip to Hong island. It had just stopped raining when I got up at 7AM. The sky was grey and cloudy. I got picked up at 8 and was the only person on the tour staying in Krabi Town. We made our way through Ao Nang and Nopparat Thara all the way to Tha Lane. There, I had to wait for a long time until another van with people for our boat arrived. The guide didn’t let us know what was going on, but in the end he apologized for being 30 minutes late and assured us it would not affect the time we would spend on the island.
This trip was very similar to a trip I did on Koh Lanta, visiting different islands. We went by speedboat this time, so the time on the boat was very short. It only took about 15 minutes to get from the pier to the first island, Koh Phak Bia. There was a long beach where the boats would anchor and a smaller beach where you could go for a snorkel. There was one other solo traveller on the trip, a French girl who had booked it especially for snorkelling. I found her in the water and asked if she’d seen anything. Even though the water looked beautiful, the visibility was shockingly bad. How can this trip be advertised as a snorkelling trip? Besides, this wasn’t a real snorkelling location. This was a beach location. So I took some photos and waited for the next spot.
The next island, Lading, was a lot more beautiful, but also very crowded. There was only the tiniest beach and most of it was used by the boats. When we arrived it seemed like it was already full, but two speedboats got pushed to the side to make room for ours. This was the beach where everyone had lunch so there were a lot of tables where food was being prepared and served. There was a small swimming area, but all I saw under water was dirt. Suddenly I didn’t even want to swim anymore.
On Hong island, the biggest of them all, we went into a lagoon first, before going to the beach on a different side of the island. I had booked some kayaking and was excited for that. To my surprise I was just given a kayak and wished a happy journey. There was no guide. You could just paddle around for up to two hours. The best thing to do seemed to be to paddle back to the lagoon again and this is what everybody did. At least I got to take my time exploring the rocks and taking photos. I saw a gigantic jelly fish floating on the surface along the way. It was great to be out on the water, paddling and floating and for me this made the day. Luckily the sun had come out and the rain stayed away, even though the darker clouds rolled in again at the end of the day. If I could have a do-over, I would have chosen a full or half day kayaking tour. This day was just too similar to some of the other tours I’ve done and didn’t offer much apart from stunning scenery.
Lovely.