A Day Trip To Ang Thong Marine National Park

 

Just west of Ko Samui and Ko Pha-Ngan lies a stunning collection of 42 islands.  Deemed worthy enough to be a marine national park, Ang Thong is one of the images that you conjure up when thinking about Thailand’s island life.  However, except for bungalows located in the national park headquarters, sleeping is off limits to everyone.

The islands of Samui and Pha-Ngan are littered with pamphlets, posters, and tourist offices proudly declaring the day trips available to Ang Thang.  There are a plethora of options, and for me it came down to an individual recommendation.  The hotel I was staying at offered a slight discount on one tour versus the rest.  Since all tours roughly went to the same islands and did the same excursions, beyond picking out of a hat there was really no way to distinguish one tour from the next.  So for about $9 less than the rest of the tours my new-found friend Chris and I had our tour booked.

Chris and I met the same way so many travelers meet when backpacking around: we were on the same ferry from Pha-Ngan to Samui, we hopped in the same mini-bus, and ended up going to the same hotel.  Chris later told me the only reason he picked the same hotel was that the driver asked where I was going and Chris decided that sounded good to him too (plus the fact that the hotel was favorably mentioned in Lonely Planet).  Thus a friendship was born and Chris and I spent the next three days hanging out in Ko Samui and taking the Ang Thong tour together before we parted ways.  This is one unique aspect of a backpacker’s life – you meet so many different people that weave in and out of your travelers and everyone is looking for a friend to hang out with.  Yet sometimes you only see each other for a few days and never see each other again, only keeping up to date on each other’s lives via Facebook, or you run into each other periodically throughout your travels since South East Asia contains a well-worn backpacker trail.

We woke early the morning of our day tour, around 7:00AM, as the mini-bus picked us up outside our hotel.  The mini-bus of the tour company then in turn went from hotel to hotel up and down the strip, picking up groggy passengers for the day ahead.  One notable passenger was a young Ethiopian man.  The dude wasn’t waiting outside the hotel for the mini-bus and the driver had trouble locating his room.  Finally out popped our man along with an Asian woman, who proceeded to hop on a scooter and zip away.  Hmm…perhaps a night of partying and a little cash exchanged hands before the lady befriended our main man here?  We didn’t ask, he didn’t tell, but it was written clearly on his face.  There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of girly bars in Thailand, especially the islands and most tourist areas on the mainland.  It isn’t uncommon to see men, especially older Western men, with a much younger Thai female attached to his hip.  I had heard and read about this behavior before so it was not shocking to see it in person.  It was still a little odd, though.

Back to our tour.  The driver rounded everybody up and we made our way to the pier for a “light” breakfast – toast and some watered down orange juice or coffee.  We then hopped on a speedboat and made our way from Ko Samui west towards Ang Thong.  The one hour boat ride was spectacular – relaxing and refreshing, watching the island of Ko Samui recede into the distance, passing by Ko Pha-Ngan, and seeing the chain of islands creep into view as we got closer to our destination.

The first stop was a small bay just outside the national park where we snorkeled for about an hour.  While fun, snorkeling just didn’t compare to my stunning week of scuba diving.  The area was also packed with people and boats.  Our group of 15-20 people plus another three boats of roughly the same size added up to a very packed area full of snorkelers.  I spent my time generally on the outskirts, catching glimpses of small fish and a few crabs before making my way back to the boat.  We then headed off into the chain of islands, weaving our way in and out of different rock and island formations.  The view was incredible, and some island formations took on animal forms, as pointed out by our wonderful captain.  I should mention here that I believe this tour was made so much more fun because we had a very engaging and fun captain.  He was friendly, funny, and made sure that we were having a good time.  I think any day tour that includes massive amounts of time with the group and led by a guide can be made or broken based on the quality of the leader.  Ours was great, and I think that made the day much more enjoyable.

We wove our way through different islands and docked at perhaps the most famous island in the chain, Ko Mae Ko, which contained a lagoon with water the color of jade.  The lagoon is named Emerald Sea, but I still think it had a very jade tone that day.  We climbed up a couple sets of steep stairs before reaching the climactic view.  Not only was the lake a stunner, but the view around was as well.  We had a clear view of some of the adjacent islands, and it was indeed worth the trip already.

After exploring the area some, we made our way back onto the boat and headed off to our next destination – another island where we stopped, rested, and had some lunch.  By this time everyone was hungry, since we had spent an hour boat ride to get to Ang Thong, an hour of snorkeling, and an hour of climbing up and down stairs.  We enjoyed a nice Thai lunch before we started our next excursion: kayaking.  The whole day was awesome, but if I had to pick a highlight it would be the next hour or so that we kayaked around the island to another secluded beach and back.  Our group paired up, Chris and I took a kayak, and together we paddled our way up and around the first island to a beach, paddled parallel to that beach, then up and around another rock formation to a second, smaller secluded beach.  Here we pulled our kayaks onto shore and swam for a bit before jumping back into the kayaks and heading back to our lunch point.

 

We finally headed to the national park headquarters where we had another hour or so to hike up to a viewpoint, hike to a cave, or relax on the beach.  Because our captain was so much fun I was easily influenced by his recommendation to go to the cave.  He said it was a short hike up a bit of a hill, and then to a huge cave.  Great, I thought, a nice little hike and we’ll be there.  Well, we were all grossly misinformed.  In fact, I wouldn’t call it misinformed as much as our captain’s idea of a nice short hike did not coincide with our group’s idea of a nice short hike.  We were all wearing sandals, mind you, and off we went.  We reached the first set of steep terrain, which were rocks faintly cut into a stair formation, but there was a rope to help you out.  Hmm…clue number one.  I figured once we ascended that we were golden.  I was wrong.  We hit two more steep ascents with rope guides in which even I was silently cursing this damned easy hike with me and my “sturdy” sandals trying to steady themselves over jagged rocks.  We finally reached the cave and promptly congratulated each other on our triumph.  The cave was indeed very scenic, huge, with massive stalactites that dwarfed us all.  Our captain guide easily scrambled into the cave and up, up, up, to an incredible viewpoint way above us.  The rest of us decided we were just fine right where we were, thank you very much.

After fifteen minutes of perusing the cave we gingerly made our way back down the crazy hill, via rope descent.  I clung to the rope backwards, rappel style, and laughed at the absurdness of the image of what I thought this hike would be compared to what it actually was.  It was worth it though.

 

We finished the day off relaxing on the beach for fifteen more minutes before we all hopped on the speedboat and made our one hour journey back to Ko Samui.  It was a wonderful day, one of the best days on the islands, and well worth the price of the tour.

Ang Thong Marine National Park is one stop not to be missed on your next trip to Thailand.