Ko Bulon Leh and Castaway

We spend three nights on Ko Bulon Leh, a very quiet island quite near the southern coast of Thailand. Despite having arranged accomodation in advance, the reception man looked incredibly confused to see us. After some bows and apologies, we were taken to our bungalow, then asked for ten minutes for the beds to be made, etc. We found this confusing ourselves but amusing as well. The employees at our resort, the Pansand, were incredibly friendly and charming though we were learning quickly that in Thailand there was much less English to be spoken.

The island had very few tourists on it and after a day or two we learned that we were known as the Canadian couple. We crossed the island on foot, checking out a couple of bays and crossed through a village or two in the process. The children were shy but would shout hello after we'd passed with incredibly cute pleased looks on their faces. The adults were only slightly more reserved and all responded well to greetings though unlike in Malaysia they didn't try to sell us anything. We passed a rubber plantation as well as some incredibly flowers including a huge bush of birds of paradise.

Among the guests there was a man that we called "Castaway". This man wore a half loin cloth, half thong and was a deeply tanned westerner. He had incredibly long dreadlocks and had set up a shelter made of sticks for protection from the sun and also for drying his clothes it would appear. He would spend his days clearing the beach of garbage and bottles, as well as burning a huge pile of driftwood at all times. Rest assured he was not sending signals for helps as we're quite sure he was well fed at the kitchen of one of the resort owners on the island. One morning some of the tourists were helping him tidy up, as we attempted to kayak around the entire island. 3/4 of the way around we had to turn back because of turbulent waters, so we went 1 1/2 times around the island instead! It was incredible and we saw many fish and caves. We snorkeled too the day before.

We left the next morning on a longtail with a Swedish family who was itching for action. Back at the port city, waiting for our speedboat we ate incredible Thai pancakes (chocolate and banana). The next leg of our journey was the craziest to date!