Day 2 started with a quick breakfast at the hostel at 8am. I then rented a scooter so we could explore the island and the other beaches. This was just $6 per day which is a great rate, plus no deposit.
Well, we got ready in our bathing suits and went downstairs to ride the scooter. As I had never driven a scooter, the lady wanted to give me some tips. I listened carefully and got on and hit the gas. Needless to say, I wrecked it immediately. Nothing serious but enough to give the locals a good laugh. The gas is extremely sensitive and the acceleration is incredible. It's so you can zip in and out but they really should give some warning. I've driven similar in China and you have to turn a lot harder there to get going, not with this bad boy. You're at 20 km per hour in a couple seconds.
After a few rides around the building, Vi finally got on. We (me, Vi and Sasha (we named our bike)) made our way to the beach north of us, Karon Beach. We didn't stop because it was a good beach but we wanted to visit a couple we had looked up online that were incredible. Plus, riding the scooter was very, very fun.
We continued up the coast and past Patong Beach, the most popular and most built up beach on the island. We kept going. We did stop along the way and take some pictures from the cliffs because it was just so beautiful.
Next beach was Kamala Beach. We went just past that as between Kamala and Surin was Laem Singh, a small cove, few visit. We walked down the side of the mountain and were happy to see this quiet little cove with 3 restaurants and about 20 people. It was nice.
We decided to go to the restaurant to have some lunch. We both ordered fish, sat back and relaxed. Vi's fish came first. It was huge and delicious. Suddenly, I realized, we misunderstood the menu. Our lunch was going to be very expensive. When we ordered the fish, we thought the dish would be 80 baht, but really it was 80 baht per 100 grams and Vi's fish was over 500 grams and mine on the grill was even larger.
We called the people over and explained the situation. They weren't happy but after enough discussing, they charged us a couple US dollars for the inconvenience and allowed us to just pay for what we ate. Needless to say, we decided to move on to the next beach.
This trip to the next beach was about 40 minutes on the scooter through small towns and away from the beach. It was a beautifu ride. We finally arrived at a beach called Naithon Beach. We read online that not many people go there. We parked the bike and made our way to the beach.
We got there and were amazed to find that we were the only people on a beach that's more than a mile long of perfect, golden sand. This was incredible. No locals, no tourists, nothing. We were so excited. We layed out our massive beach towel and went to play in the water and take a walk. We took pictures and video because it was just unbelievable. It was like out of a movie. Suddenly you come upon this perfect beach that you have all to yourself. We ended up calling our beach as it felt like we were the first ones to step foot here. Wow.
After some time at our beach, we hopped back on the scooter for the next beach up to catch a good sunset view, Nai Yang Beach. This was another 30-40 minute ride that took us away from the beach. We arrived at Nai Yang and rented 2 chairs to put our stuff. We took a walk and enjoyed the scenery.
The beach was a disappointment having just left a perfect beach with nobody on it but we still enjoyed it. We both took naps under the sun as the sun began to be mostly covered by clouds. We woke up and ate some food at a restaurant the sand, which was very nice.
As the sun began to sink, we moved to a better position to view but only to be blocked by too many clouds to really see anything. We decided at that point to head back to our hostel. We began our journey at the bottom of the island and had made it all the way to the top over the course of the day.
We had no idea how far we were from the hostel until we reached the nearest town, 20 minutes away, and saw a sign that read Patong Beach 32kms. Uh oh! We had driven over 50 kms that day. Instead of taking all the winding, small, unlit backroads, I hopped on the big highway.
While it sounds scary, it was actually way better than the small roads. I was able to go faster and it was pretty much a straight road the whole way. Near the end of trip it began to rain on us. We were still a good 4o minutes from our hostel so we just had to push through. This was really ok because it never rained too hard and we were only going up steep hills so far, not down.
On the way up one mountain, we witnessed a bad accident. A girl on a scooter fell on her side and slid down the side of the mountain making a horrible noise. I hope she was ok.
That jolted both of us and on the way down each mountain I was very, very careful and we had no such accidents. The people here can be crazy on these things.
We stopped at Karon Beach, just north of where we're staying, and laid out under the stars for
a while before continuing to the hostel. It was beautiful to just lie under the stars and hear the waves.
We arrived back almost 2 hours after we had set off for the hostel. It was a great day with amazing beaches and a great journey. We ate at the same restaurant that we had before and enjoyed some Thai Phad noodles. We came back, took showers and went to sleep exhausted.
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