S'Tune Province (A.K.A. The Rebellious South)

Over our March school holiday in 2007 my good buddy Eric and I decided to go check out less touristy area of Southern Thailand. I have visited a good amount of the southern Thai islands, but I had never been down to the Satun (S'tune) region that borders Malaysia.
Boy am I glad we went and checked this area out. Our first legitimate stop was Koh Tarutao. Back in the late 1930's it was used as both a criminal and political prison. It is a big island and far away from the mainland. The prisoners were usually left on the island to die from
Malaria. All the prisoners were told that there were gigantic sharks in the waters surrounding this beautiful island. Only the brave tried to escape. That news didn't stop me from hopping in for a dip. This was the view from one of the many white sand beaches on Koh Tarutao. If you look closely you can see a planet in the sky, we couldn't figure out which one. My guess was Saturn or Mars. I should of payed more attention in Astronomy class.

These next pictures our from our long adventurous hike on Taruatao. We literally didn't see anyone while on this hike, well except for monkeys, birds, and a wild boar that decided to make his presents felt. We ended up kind of stumbling upon this mile long white sand beach. It wasn't marked and we were the only ones leaving our footprints in the white sand.

Eric is capturing me taking a picture of the deserted white sand beach. I think I know where I'll be spending my honeymoon.

After our 10k hike in the blazing heat we were exhausted, but what better than a beer and a cold bottle of water.

Fortunately, we made it back to our bungalow just in the nick of time. As you can see in the picture a big storm was coming to give everything in its path a refreshing monsoonal shower. You'll have to forgive me; I wasn't going to stick around for the action shot of the eye of the storm. I was more like "Run for Shelter!"

After 3 days on Koh Tarutao it was time to move on to Koh Lip-eh. Eric and I are two young dudes that like a little nightlife from time to time. The electricity would shut down at 10:30 pm every night, which was not conducive to our holiday lifestyle. Plus it was hot in our rooms. I slept with the door open every night. Not real smart to do on an island where they filmed a series of Survivor. I woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of guano. I am very hospitable to visitors, but when a giant bat decides to come set up shop in my room I get a little inhospitable. After about a 20 minute battle I was finally able to get the bat out the door. It's real hard to show a flying blind bat the door.