We’d left plenty of time to get back, so we decided to try a different route back, one that looked slightly quicker on our map.
Huffing and puffing as we went, we set off on the uphill journey across the Island, and took the turnoff indicated by the map, followed by another, up a steep dirt track. When I say steep, I mean steep and, even in the early evening sunshine, our lack of fitness was evident in copious perspiration, particularly on my part, incapable as I am of looking like anything but a hopelessly unfit and pathetic tourist in anything above 25 degrees. I was even wearing a Hawaiian shirt, for crying out loud. Anyway, we finally reached the summit, having only, so we thought, to pick our way down the steep descent to Ao Leuk before a refreshing shower and hearty dinner. A Thai lady was passing on a motorbike and asked where we were headed. When we replied, and she pointed out that Ao Leuk was actually back down that way, our hearts sank; for the muscle-burning, lung-exploding scrabble up that dirt path to have been for nothing seemed annoying at best, but down the hill we went, eager to get back to the bungalow and relax. After consulting several passing Thai people, we received a set of directions in confusingly broken English (which, it almost doesn’t need saying, was about a thousand times clearer than our barely mastered ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank You’ in Thai) that, while not exactly matching, gave us a general idea of where to head and equalled, joy of joys, more steep ascents. I was cursing myself at this point of time for suggesting an opinion of going to Ko Tao.
We understood that we had to walk up beyond the massive wind turbine at the summit of the hill and keep going in order to reach our bay but it became clear, after quite some walk, that the road we were on headed nowhere much toward where we wanted to be. My little brother said “Ummm….do we have any idea where we are heading to”. I answered back “Keep your mouth shut”. At this stage, we were still able to laugh at the silliness of our situation, and what a picture of incompetence two bright red, soaked-in-sweat, lost tourists must have made, but the thought was entering the back of our minds that, as the sun got lower and lower in the sky, so our torchless descent down a boulder strewn, sand covered 90 degree path would become more treacherous quite quickly.
We scrapped that path and took a punt on following a sign toward ‘Nice Moon Bungalows’ which, although it didn’t actually share a part of Ao Leuk bay, was near enough on the map, might have a path leading to home, and would certainly be staffed by friendly people who would point us in an unquestionably correct direction and perhaps even offer us some help in terms of a truck or boat ride there, or at least sell us a torch.
If we thought we’d already walked some tough roads that day, we were sadly mistaken; the narrow path to Nice Moon was hard, and covered in a layer of fine sand, making it frighteningly slippery, particularly when one took into consideration the crazy steepness of the decent. By now, the sun was getting worryingly close to the horizon and we realised that time was very much of the essence in finding a way back (all the while, in a touristy bout of doublethink, taking out our cameras to try and capture the beautiful sunset), knowing that there was no sensible chance of negotiating our way back in the dark, but no way of contacting anyone in the event that we were stranded. Even at this stage we didn’t panic though cause, lo and behold, in the distance, our little group of bungalows hove into view. We laughed at the silliness of how long it had taken us to get back by our ‘short-cut’ and discussed how well earned the ice cold beer we’d enjoy when we got back would be.
We may also have been laughing when we finally, after what seemed like ages of careful walking down that steep jungle path, wandered into the grounds of Nice Moon. It was deserted.
Completely overgrown, plastic awnings pulled around the restaurant, rubbish left undisposed of and eerily quiet save the chirruping of evening crickets. There were even a whole family of shoes left outside the restaurant, but no people. We searched around the area for a path down to Ao Leuk, but the only thing that looked like it could have formerly been designed to walk down was now thick with plants and roots, steep, dark and dangerous, rendering it impassible.
Where there may have been a funny side before, there now was not. With the sun sunk over the horizon and a fast darkening sky, we had no choice but to make a run for it, back to the lit main road at the top of the path. To navigate the narrow, dusty jungle-surrounded trail we’d just carefully walked down in pitch blackness was not an option we cared to think to hard about, so we just ran; all those wildly steep downward gradients were now upward, complete with sandy-slipperiness and jutting roots and rocks. In my life, I’ve never run so fast up a hill so steep, and definitely not in a tropical climate. The apparent eternity later, when we reached the summit again, we were both drenched to the skin, with dusty, sore feet (this whole ordeal, needless to say, was conducted in flip-flops), wheezing and coughing, but at least we were now on a lit road.
We trekked back the few kilometres to civilization (only after having got directions from a guy on a motorbike with one hand on a handlebar and, in the other, I kid you not, a rifle), exhausted but relieved, fell upon the local 7 Eleven to buy a torch and two bottles of water and enlisted a man with a truck to drive us to the top of the descent at Ao Leuk, which isn’t navigable by any sensible driver after dark. From there, new torch in hand, we slowly, slidily and joyfully picked our way down to the beach that, some time earlier we’d stared at, with longing futility and ebbing hope from the top of a jungle ledge, and fell upon the bar to explain the whole ordeal to our confused but sympathetic Thai hosts.
Word Count : 1436
