I thought I knew every beach between the cities of Surat Thani and Nakhon Si Thammarat. Wrong.
If the sun is shining, and I don’t feel like blogging or coding, I jump in Bert and we go beach hunting. So, I was quite surprised to find photos on Facebook of some place called Nangkam Beach in Surat Thani province.
A quick check on Google Maps showed that it is right next to the Don Sak Ferry Terminal. Well, that sort-of explains why I’ve never been there because many of the roads close to the port can only be used if you are actually taking a ferry … and so far, I haven’t. Taken a ferry, that is.
One day I will. When I feel like I’ve exhausted things to see on the mainland. But, by reputation, Koh Samui is not somewhere I’m anxious to visit. I hear there are too many tourists, too many hotels crammed into small pieces of beachside land, too few places to get onto a beach, and it’s too expensive.
But one day I’ll feed Bert some motion sickness pills and persuade him to drive down the ramp onto a ferry. Don Sak is less than an hour’s drive from Sichon, so I figure I can get the measure of the island in a day trip.
Anyhoo, yesterday afternoon it looked like there would finally be a break from this…
… so I headed north straight after lunch. Don Sak is a small nondescript fishing village, with nothing I could find that was worth photographing. There might have been fishing boats and an active fishing industry worth seeing, but every side street leading to the sea seemed to be blocked with vehicles, packing crates, drying nets, or generally looking a bit unsavory.
But there’s nice scenery around the town and ferry terminal…
So, from there, I tried to locate this well hidden Nangkam Beach. The first road I found on the map could only be reached from the side of the dual carriageway leading from the Ferry Terminal. Not too helpful. Well, I could have pretended to be Thai and driven the wrong way up to the junction, but I prefer to retain a certain degree of sanity.
Instead I went south a bit, east a bit and north a bit, and decided this might just be the place…
Smart, eh?
Small, but a nice place. There are really only two roads. The beachfront road, and the road that gets you there. The beach road to the left leads back to the port, and to the right stops when it reaches the cliff face. In between there’s – well, the beach – a few restaurants, a couple of tiny resorts, one or two to-die-for private villas, and palm trees.
The people were really friendly and smiley. I’m guessing they don’t see many farangs. They probably don’t see many Thais either.
One young lad was a bit of pest. I’ve no idea what he wanted, and even though I kept telling him “I already gave at the office” I couldn’t shake him until I jumped back in Bert and even then I had to be pushy to stop him getting in with me. Where’s pest control when you need them?
I wandered around the far end of the village for a while, were there’s a tiny jetty and fishing port, did more smiling, and decided I’d seen the whole place. And now you can see the whole place too…
It’s a pity about the jetty though. I think someone forgot to put in the reinforcement panels before they laid the concrete. I suspect some government, national or local, paid for the panels, but somehow they never quite made it to the correct destination.
Before leaving, I did spot some signs to an “Eco Walk” which seemed to be a gravel trail leading around the headland to more beaches. The total trip there and back was more than three kilometers, and it was too late in the day to embark on that, so I’ve put Had Nang Kam back on the “to visit” list, and will visit again one day, earlier in the day, and better prepared.
For now though, it’s time for more of the weather you can see above. It must stop soon, mustn’t it?
