ko mak dreaming
after 4 years 11 month and 19 days i was ready to return to ko mak, the tiny thai island on which i spend one season working in ko mak resort. yet while i was alone when first coming to the island i decided to do this return trip with my tattoo artist friend yeow chong, who is equally brilliant at his art as he is a conversation partner. and to make the entire revisiting of ko mak complete i decided not only to spend at least one night in trat in my favourite trat guesthouse, but i also managed to hook up with ingo, who worked on ko mak at the very same time as i, who now lives in bangkok where he has just opened a brilliant outdoor roof-terrace restaurant called island, and who was super kind enough to offer us vip limousine and accommodation in ingo lodge :)

so off we went, flying with airasia to bkk, spending the night eating, and talking in the capital, before taking off to by bus to trat, a small town in eastern thailand, next stop cambodia. the place, as unexciting as it might look at first glance, has not only the friendliest guesthouse to offer, but also the best night market in thailand, at least in terms of food. and if that is not reason to go there, then certainly the cheap shopping in the market should do it, or its fantastic massage, or… well go and find out for yourself ;)

and after far too much food and shopping we took the songtheaw to the pier at leum ngop, where we took the boat to ko mak. a three hour ride along ko chang’s coast, between small islands, and into the setting sun beyond ko mak. thus i arrived, as so many times before, in the dusk on the now rebuild pier, and on our ride on the back of the pick-up across the island to ko mak resort at the northern beach i realised how much had changed in the last few years. but the biggest surprise was ko mak resort itself, i hardly recognised the place, which had changed so much, yet my previous employers, jakrapad and his wife bau were still the same, only the restaurant appeared now super efficiently run, with large outdoor sitting area and a beach front bar. only the coconut trees and the yellow sand seemed to be unchanged.

here we spend two nights and days lying in hammocks and deck chairs, floating in the shallow waters of the gulf of thailand, taking photos of wildlife and sunsets, watching 'geckos over the moon', talking excessively, eating far too much food and drinking even more, before we left the island with the new speedboat that took us back to leum ngop in only 45min, which meant we could spend another culinary highlight night in trat before flying from the world cutest airport to bkk and from their with jetstarasia back to singapore. all in all i had a fantastic time and the long weekend was just what i needed before the start of a new term. . .