…Up North.

On a tiny island, it’s hard to know where east and west end, and north begins. The fact is, the island is quite narrow at the top, so there isn’t much you could truly call north. Plus, the northern end is quite remote and there are very few roads, so you can’t get to most of it.

The place I mentioned at the end of the last article was where the west coast road stopped. Was that west or was it north.

Yes. Or no. No matter, it wasn’t very interesting.

But opposite, on the northeast coast there’s a place called Long Beach. To get there you go inland from the Tha Khao Pier, which is where the longtail boats arrive from Krabi. Then through the small village of Ban Bangchak, and keep going North into the jungle. There are signs. It’s a two lane concrete road that becomes a one lane concrete road that becomes a dirt track that becomes a one lane concrete road again that deteriorates into some gravel that looks vaguely like a road. And you arrive at this…

Ooo, what a long beach! Must be all of ten meters. Well, that can’t be right, I thought, so I asked Mimi to go “upstairs” and get a better view…

Okay, there is a little more beach than is visible from the end of the road, but I still wouldn’t call it “long.” A marketing ploy perhaps.

Apparently, despite the state of the road, this is a very popular watering hole for tourists during the high season. Right now it’s closed…

I dread to think of the carnage they create as they jump on their rented “motocys” and head back down the gravel track, well hosed, in the dead of night! Maybe they don’t. Maybe they crash out on the beach. Would there be room?

So, after heading back down the gravel track that becomes a … you get the picture … my travel companion for the day decided there was another road to the north which lead to the Paradise Koh Yao Resort. And it looked like they had a beach that was worth seeing.

Now, the road up the middle of the northern part of the island didn’t pretend to be anything other than unpaved rough and rutted hard packed earth. With nice slippery muddy bits under the trees, and some first gear “will we make it?” uphill bits. For thirty minutes…

And people ask me why I bought a truck!

It was fun, but you needed to be alert to miss the biggest rocks and deepest holes.

So, it was with great anticipation of the spectacular views to make it all worthwhile, that we arrived at this…

Some serious and quite aggressive security. Entry was absolutely positively not going to be permitted. Well, until I decided we should ask if we could have lunch there, and that was eventually agreed. A golf buggy was sent to pick us up. At which point I decided it was my turn to be difficult and changed my mind. I figured if the place was that exclusive I’d likely need a bank loan to pay for lunch!

We jumped back into Bert and bounced for thirty minutes back again.

The thing that mystified me was that if this resort was so exclusive, the guests must be rich and famous, and the rich and famous would not tolerate thirty minutes of bouncing around in a truck. Then it hit me. They don’t. They arrive by sea, probably in some exclusive speedboat direct from the jetty in Phuket or Krabi, which they’ve reached in the hotel’s limo. Or something like that.

So; after K’s Magical Mystery Tours, tomorrow we’ll talk about the south of the island. Much more interesting.