A Stopover That Didn’t Quite Behave Like a Stopover
Looking back now, sitting in a pink beanbag on the beach in Koh Phangan, it doesn’t really feel like a week where much happened. Then I remember where the week began.
Last Monday I was sitting on the ferry, watching George Town disappear into the distance. Andy and I spent the week travelling north through Malaysia, crossing into Thailand, spending a day in Hat Yai, Thailand’s third largest city, continuing on to the southern islands in the Gulf of Thailand, and then spending half a week on Koh Phangan.
From Hat Yai
Andy and I had decided to head for Thailand’s southern islands, so our stop in Hat Yai was meant to be just that: a stop along the way rather than a destination. Even so, we booked two nights so we wouldn’t have to rush.
Hat Yai made an impression on me from the moment we arrived. It’s a city that feels far too big for how lively it actually is. It’s certainly not deserted. There are people on the streets, interesting morning and night markets, clubs and shops. But everything somehow feels smaller than the city was built for.
On our way to the hostel we walk along a large four-lane road where the afternoon traffic barely needs two lanes. The streets are laid out much like those in many other Asian cities. Almost every storefront at street level can be opened up to become a shop, restaurant or something else. I’m used to these places being open almost all the time, perhaps with a “Closed” sign if it’s late at night. In Hat Yai, many of the storefronts are shut behind metal shutters and grilles, even in the middle of the day.
Andy and I spent our day in Hat Yai separately. I found a café and later stumbled upon a beautiful Buddhist temple. We met up again in the afternoon and headed to the night market. It was lively and packed with cheap food stalls, souvenirs, clothes and everything else you might expect. Once again I found myself thinking about the contrast between the markets and the rest of the city.
After we’d eaten and were walking back, I started sharing my observations with Andy. I pointed to the apartments above the shops. There were almost no lights on. No plants. No clothes hanging out to dry. None of the little signs that people actually lived there. Not just in one building, but all the way down the street.
Andy didn’t respond much, so I apologised for my random urban observations. Five minutes later I heard him say, “I’ve kept looking. You’re right. It is strange.” When we got back to the hostel, we had to ask about it. Our hostess explained that many of the locals had moved away after severe flooding back in November.
The Dead Party and the Living Beach
I should say that I genuinely liked Hat Yai. It felt a bit like visiting an amusement park outside peak hours. So after two nights and only one full day, it actually felt a little early to leave. But we had a pink beanbag on a beach with a cold beer waiting for us, and the bus was already booked.
We arrived on Koh Phangan in the afternoon after a long eight-hour journey. Our hostel is called Slumber Party Hostel. As the name suggests, it’s marketed as a party hostel. For some reason, though, we arrived to a surprisingly quiet place. It seems the party had already died.
We have a bar, a pool, a beach, and all the physical ingredients needed to make a group of backpackers completely lose track of time. The drinks naturally come with a bit of a premium, so it’s not the cheapest place to settle in. Even so, it’s hardly expensive. A beer costs about the same as buying a crate of beer back home in Denmark. Except here I’m sitting in a pink beanbag beneath a palm tree in thirty-degree heat while drinking it. Though from what I hear, Denmark is slowly catching up.
The beach at Slumber Party Hostel is really the part of Southeast Asia I haven’t done enough of. It’s not the world’s best beach. At low tide in the morning you have to walk about a hundred metres before the water reaches your ankles. You also have to watch where you step because there are clusters of sharp coral and shells. Fortunately, there’s a sandbar stretching out from the shore that’s easy to follow once you know where it is. In the afternoon, that’s the route to take. You still have to walk the same hundred metres, but by then the water is deep enough for a proper swim.
If you head into the sea hoping to cool off, you’ll probably be disappointed. The water must be around 25 or 26 degrees Celsius. The real relief comes from taking a dip and then letting the tropical sea breeze do the rest. The pool is where you actually cool down, so the routine quickly becomes: jump into the sea, jump into the pool, drink a beer in the beanbag, and repeat until it gets dark.
And that’s more or less how my days on Koh Phangan have gone so far. Apart from the evening out I wrote about last time, I’ve really just been an ordinary beach tourist for a few days. And the plan is to keep doing exactly that until I get bored of it, or my visa runs out.
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