Koh Kood

My sense of Manhattan is that getting most places takes 45 minutes by subway. Here, it seems like everything takes an hour. An hour by songthaew to the ferry. Ferry to the island, about an hour. An hour to/from the airport. Flight from Udon Thani to Bangkok, from Bangkok to Trat, an hour, an hour. It's kind of funny to me. 

So, Koh Kood, I'm not even sure what to say. The water at the big beach was just so, so beautiful, the most perfect aqua I've ever seen. Long, long, slow deepening of pure sand into the Gulf of Thailand, light colored sand, if not actually white, gentle swells and small waves, totally my jam (Marc likes bigger, sharper waves, and kind of body surfs them). Everything about floating in that water was bliss, with one teeny, tiny exception. We got teeny, tiny stings from something that really did sting, but left no marks. They certainly weren't enough to keep us out of the water, or to ruin the experience, they were just the only exception to perfect in that water. In my mind it will remain the Platonic Ideal.

There was one strange thing on that specific beach: a large compound-type hotel of cabins that reminded me of a camp, that was All Russians All the Time. In fact, there was a sign on one of the buildings that said "We Shop Russia West," which we could make no sense of. They wrote in Russian in the sand, they got hefty Russian massages on the beach, they chattered in Russian and ate loudly in Russian. It really was unusual, and if we were more curious we might investigate, but it'll just linger as a bit of "huh?" for that beach.

Also on that beach, Marc's exploration uncovered a little restaurant at a hidden-away hotel of some kind that had the BEST food. We ate there every night but our first night, and of the four nights, I got shrimp curry three times, and of everything we tried, I think we both agree it was the best, and not just the best for their menu, but really perhaps the best Thai dish we ate on the whole vacation. The waiter spoke English and was the sweetest young man, with a very sweet smile. He pointed at an older man and told us he was the cook, and I don't know if maybe it was a family running the place? Anyway, it was just so delicious.

This shrimp curry was AMAZING. The first night,
the curry sauce was very thick and the other nights
it was a bit looser, perfect for soaking into rice. The
shrimp were perfectly cooked, slightly soft but not
mushy, and the curry had a bit of an Indian flavor,
with some kind of celery-tasting herb.

Marc got this fried fish with garlic, and while
it was hard to eat (and so, not for me), he said
it was really delicious.

These money bags -- a kind of fried
spring roll -- were perfectly fried the first
night we had them. I always think fried food
served on paper towels means they know
what they're doing. I think that's just me.

The iffy part was our hotel, The Hideout. As Marc initially said, they were very reluctant to help, but over time he modified it to say the help was substandard. (It was the first place we've been where the great majority of guests were Thai; there was a young couple from the Netherlands, who we met on the way from the Rimklong, and another western couple, but the rest were Thai, which might explain why the staff at what is advertised as a very highly-rated resort spoke very little English. But OK, we are in Thailand.) When we arrived, they went through the check-in process, handed us a key, and that was the end of it. So we stood there for a minute and Marc asked how we find our room, and with a seed of annoyance, the woman pointed out a golf cart that held our luggage and said we could follow him. 

So we walked behind the luggage cart to our "villa." VERY weird. I mean, it's hard to talk about that without sounding haught -- clutching my pearls, we had to walk -- and that's not my point at all. It's just that it was so weird. We have 18 years of experience traveling in Asia, and have stayed at places like this one (and fancier, and shabbier), and nothing like this has happened. Really, it was her being bothered by having to tell us how to get to our room that was the point.

We wanted to rent a motorcycle to ride away from the hotel for some dinner the first night, and there was a whole parking lot full of motorcycles. The website said they rent motorcycles. The front desk closed at 6pm, and we were there around 4pm asking to rent one. "For how many days?" she asked, and Marc said for four hours. So the implication was that sure, she'd rent us a motorcycle, how many days, but when he said four hours -- which is the fee segmentation -- suddenly there weren't any available, they were all rented by guests. After Marc pushed and pushed, she finally said we could take hers, but we'd have to have it back by 6, when she got off work. A minute later she said OK, four hours, but you'll have to leave the key at the restaurant. It was just a perfect indicator of their unwillingness to help guests. (Really, this was primarily a front desk issue. Staff in the restaurant were friendly and kind.)

Another thing we'll remember about Koh Kood is an in-our-face continuation of a thing we've noticed elsewhere in our SEAsian travels: all the posing and photo-taking of young women. At the water's edge, there were 10 sunbeds -- my favorite place to pass the day, listening to the quiet sounds of the water coming in and out. It was also one of the prime locations for this photo-taking business. A couple would go to one of the picturesque spots and spend 30-45 minutes with the young woman posing, this pose, that pose, glancing over her shoulder, back to the camera fixing her hair, facing the camera making the peace sign, FOR SO LONG. On, and on, and on, and on. All the young women ran through the same poses, it seemed, as if they had received a guide or manual. And they'd return, day after day, to do the same thing, even though the view didn't change, nor did their poses. We couldn't figure it out. The young man would take photos for a few minutes, then he and the young woman would review the photos and she'd return to posing. Given the uniformity of the poses, you'd think some could just be taken off the web and claimed as their own -- back to the camera, playing with her very long black hair, hat on head (and always the same hat). One young man had a tripod and SLR for his daily photo sessions. The young men were never in the photos, not even with the young women. It was really, really strange, but so common that it must just be a cultural thing we don't understand.

The room (our "villa") was so bizarre. Taking up almost the entire room was a high concrete platform, with a bed on it. The night tables were on the platform, too. So to get on and off the bed, we had to take a giant step onto the platform, and I had to walk on it to get around to my side of the bed. It left very little floor space. At the foot of the platform was a narrow couch that took up the length of the platform, and it was really the only place to put our suitcases -- which meant that if we wanted to be in our room, we had to just be up on the bed. It was just so weird. Each "villa" was a concrete stand-alone small building, but they'd added some kind of bamboo structure around them to disguise that. It was actually a clever design solution. When we were looking at the hotel website before booking our stay, we kept wondering what the bamboo cages were around the buildings, and that's what they were about. The daily maid service took five minutes, although on the fourth day they didn't even do that. The steps up to our villa were rotting and dangerous, so to get up to it, I always held on to the column and took the giant step up to the porch, instead of the two rotting steps. Weird, for the kind of hotel they are pretending to be.

And again, it's hard to find a way to talk about it without it sounding haughty and offended -- it's really just that it was so WEIRD.

But oh, the setting was so beautiful. Most days I spent the whole day lounging at the water's edge, listening to the sound of the water and reveling in the long, flat horizon that my spirit craves.

Sunrise/set were to our far left and right, so we only got them
obliquely, but the haze often made the colors so beautiful,

Lovely after dark, but I always got eaten up by bugs. Who
seem to adore me.

I'll miss this daily spot.

The pool captured at the bottom of the shot, bar on the right.
Stunning palm trees at dusk.

Marc wandered around a lot, explored our part of the island,
but I couldn't get enough of just being in this spot. I mean it
when I say I'll miss it so much, but I sat there enough hours
to get the quiet surf sound embedded in my inner ear.

Each "villa" had one of these things.

Just, LOVE.

I got so much color! I'm just about the same 
color as Marc, who always gets nut-brown,
but the undertones of our skin are different so
it looks a little different. But I now have a 
beautiful tan. 

There was a tree right next to the spot I always
took, and I spent so many hours with my legs
propped up on it like this.

When it was time to leave, we got on a songtheaw, just us (cool, I thought!), until the driver made a stop and so many young people got on that their luggage had to be piled on top, and we were all wedged in so tight. The kids at the end were surely at risk of falling out, and I was wedged so far against the edge that my left leg went to sleep. They were VERY loud -- no louder than young people anywhere, I think about the NYC subway -- but along with the heat, and the headache I had so many days, and the bouncy ride, it was a lot for me. We got to the pier (a different pier than the one we'd arrived on) and just had no idea what to do. A young Thai man helped us, and we got on the smaller but faster boat than the one that had brought us to Koh Kood, and when we got to Trat, a beautiful, cool, quiet car driven by a sweet young Thai woman took us the hour-long drive to the airport (everything is an hour away!).

the waiting area :)

The Trat airport is so tiny, so charming and strange, like an airport run by a few kids who decided to have an airport. We finally realized we weren't in the departure area just as it was time to board the easy flight to Bangkok. The taxi ride from the airport to our hotel took -- guess what, an hour -- and we settled in for our last hours on this trip.