Welcome to part 2 of my Thailand journey! After my brief stay in Phuket I had to board a speedboat to reach the island of Koh Yao Noi. It’s roughly a 20 minute ride on said speedboat, it you take the longboat (there are only a few ones throughout the day) it will take you about one hour. The speedboat ride costs about 15 €, if you go by longboat it will cost less – but as said before, the departure times for the longboat are quite irregular. If you need more information about the departure times check out this website.
The ferry ride was fun and the weather was great. So no bumpy butt hurting speedboat ride, yay! I boarded on the Bang Rong Pier on the east coast of Phuket and landed on Koh Yao Noi Pier. Taxi-like vehicles were already waiting on the pier to pick up tourists and bring them to their resorts. As you can see below, the “taxis” were more like small open trucks. But the ride was comfy, breezy and the view was AMAZING! You ride alongside the shore and through the forest and because this vehicle is so open, you feel as if you were amidst it all.
After a 20 min ride (we had to drop off other tourists along the way), we reached the resort I would be staying at for the next 7 days. Island Yoga is a wonderful place with lots of little bungalows, yoga rooms, a restaurant, beach and nature all around as well as many furry companions (cats) that like to enjoy the warmth that radiates of the walkways between the buildings.
I checked in and was brought to my own little bungalow. I chose to stay in a private bungalow with a ceiling fan (no air con though). You could also stay in a dorm-like room and could choose between no ventilation at all, a ceiling fan or a room with air con. I wanted to stay on my own because this was meant to be a journey of quiet meditation, yoga and lots of introspection – so it would only distract me to have room mates all around me. But if you travel with friends or want to connect more, then the dorm-like rooms are a great option!
It was already quite late in the afternoon when I finished unpacking and so I decided to just take a walk and explore the area instead of hurrying to the evening yoga class. If you want to see some videos of the area as well as some scenic views and waves crashing on the beautiful beach you can do so on my Nextbeat page! Just check out my Thailand room. I hadn’t seen anything of this island other then the parts I passed when riding the taxi so I decided to have dinner at the resorts restaurant. As you know me, every trip is a food trip for me, no matter the initial purpose of any journey. You will NEVER find me fasting or dieting while traveling. I love to enjoy the local food, customs and way of living/eating way too much to punish myself like this. So this Thailand trip was no exception. I ate and ate and ate until I couldn’t eat anymore. Whenever I saw something that looked or smelled good and I even had the tiniest of space in my stomach I would order it! So here are some pictures of what I ate (just a small selection because, y’know, not everyone is into foodporn, haha). Everything was good, fresh, had lots of veggies, meat and fruit and was quite spicy sometimes. And ooooohhhh, the fresh fruit juices. They were to die for 😍
Refreshed, sated and joyful after watching the sunset from my table, I returned to my “home” for the next week. The Wifi connection was a bit tricky sometimes but on this day it was good enough to Skype with my partner, attest my arriving safely via WhatsApp and ended the day with a few Youtube videos to unwind. Yes, it was quite hot, even at nighttime, but the windows were open all day round so it was bearable. The only downside were the hordes of mosquitos (well, I knew that beforehand, but still). Every bed had mosquito netting and I was wearing insect repellent as well as putting tissues with insect repelling oils (like citronella) on my mattress. But nothing helped and by the end of the trip I would look like I had the measles…
I slept rather well and woke up early next morning in time for Morning Yoga. The morning class is a more powerful yoga style to wake you up, stretch your body and up your strength as well as your stamina. Because summer in Thailand is really hot we sweated a lot. Like, a lot a lot. But doing exercises while listening to the sounds of birds, the wind rustling in the leaves and the cats meowing under the elevated bungalow floor was so refreshing and so soothing that it is hard to describe. After one and a half hours of training we felt pretty tired but also very elevated.
I knew then that it had been the right decision to come here. It was what my body and soul needed. Right after morning class you can have breakfast. All of us were sweaty and very hungry, so we just went to have breakfast as is and showered afterwards. Breakfast never tasted this good. It was buffet style and you could choose from some egg dish (like sunny side up, scrambled, omelette, etc.), fried rice or noodles, salad, veggies, fruits, bread, sweets and many more. Fresh water was available for free all day round, tea as well. After stuffing our faces we headed for our rooms to shower. In every bungalow you have a tiled room with a shower head on the wall, a small basin and a toilet. The wet room had no windows but small rectangular openings on the upper side of the walls facing to the garden. Fresh air could come in and the steam could get out. There being no glass windows you tended to have “visitors” in your bathroom. Most of the time it was either bugs, insects and/or geckos. Honestly spoken I would have rather had more geckos in my bungalow because they would have munched on the stupid mosquitos and other insects…
After my shower I decided to explore the island a bit. But more of that in my next and last post! So if you want to see more scenic pics and explore this little island with me, stay tuned!
XO, Alex