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Here’s some
highlights from
John and Andy’s
travel diary and
some photos
from their trip!
>>
Day 15
I collected the sea kayaks from my trailer and drove
to the airport to meet Andy. We had paddled a 10 day
trip several years ago around the islands of arcapelico
in the Gulf of Thailand. This time our plan was to
circumnavigate the islands down the Thai coast in the
Andaman Sea. One of the downsides to some of these islands is
that when the tour boats arrive they get very busy
very quickly. After camping on the beach overnight,
we packed our tents and gear away before the
day visitors arrive. We then started to explore a
large group of islands nearby, we found several
open entrances into a huge open sky lagoon with a
large cave entrance and there were some fantastic
stalactites and stalagmites dripping all off the cliff
faces as if thrown on wet when formed.
Days 5 an d 6
We circumnavigated the smaller island of Ko Phayam
and the larger island of Ko Chang. It was very windy
and the locals said they had never seen weather
like this for over twenty five years and the weather
forecast kept predicting even stronger winds. We
decided to go for it in the hope of getting some tidal
assistance going up the east coast of the island,
however it turned out to be a really hard slog against
the wind which had picked up in strength with
breaking waves.”
Day 1 1
Day 19
We couldn’t complete our original route as the
Chief Ranger on the Island told us it would be too
dangerous. There are heavy fines for disobeying
park rangers instructions in Thailand so we stuck to
the innerside islands which he mapped out for us.
We managed to paddle around Ko Mae and see the
Emerald Lagoon but we could not get in through the
caves due to high water levels.
Day 20
We headed to Ko Sam Sao and were hit by a large
tropical storm which showed amazing rainbows on
the water’s surface and we lost visibility for a while.
Before retiring for the night we climbed a rock face
with the help of fixed ropes already in position up 100
metres to a viewpoint with an amazing view of most
of the islands.
Photographs from John Conlin-Jones and Andy Burrow
Big day today as we circumnavigate the north island
and the only stop point is a campsite over three
quarters of the way around. We set off around 9am
into a fresh north easterly wind with white caps and
breaking waves. The north island is the best place to
see reef sharks, rays, sea turtles and whale sharks so
after getting half way around, after paddling through
two tidal streams and lots of surf we stopped and
snorkeled for an hour.
Day 1