Koh Mook with her beautiful blue waters, and cliffs making up the northwest coast, offers nothing short of a scenic adventure for anyone wanting to explore on a kayak. Most people rent kayaks just to visit the famous Emerald Cave, which is only a short paddle clockwise around the coast from Charlie Beach. The Hungarians and I decided to kayak around the entire island.
Charlie Beach had no end of locals renting out kayaks by the hour, the half day, and the full day. There were singles, doubles, and even triples. Some poor toothless boy tried to rent us a triple for 300 baht, even though the sign clearly said 500. We thought we had scored a good deal, but his manager quickly came down to the beach and corrected his error when the correct sum of money didn’t find its way up to the shop.
If you are planning a trip to kayak around Koh Mook, or even just to visit Emerald Cave, then be sure to check the tide charts. The cave is only accessible around low tide (which is about 30 minutes later every day). As such, we began our journey counter clockwise from Charlie Beach, in order to reach the cave last, at the end of the day.
Our journey brought us to spots that were deserted, but still marked on Google Maps. The first beach was called Ruby Beach, a small sliver of sand lined closely by jungle that was blissfully exotic given the fact that there was no reason for anyone to ever go there. Then Mermaid Cove, which was inhabited by a family of dogs who kept their distance, and a tire swing. From there we rounded the southern point of the island and kayaked straight across the bay to Sivalai Beach, the picturesque stretch of white sand extending out to a point that can’t be missed from a Google Maps shot.
While the guys enjoyed the perfect stretch of white sand for the first time, I left to pay the dive shop a visit. Now that I was out enjoying all the island had to offer, it seemed only fitting to inquire about diving. Plus after I had missed out on diving Koh Lipe, I was beginning to get the itch to make up for it.
The small closet of a dive shop was empty, but they left the door open and a sign that they would be back around 3-4. I snooped around for a moment and finally found a price list. Local dives were $100 for two tanks. Our island hopping excursion had shown that there was nothing special in the immediate Koh Mook area reef-wise, so I would probably have to sign up for one of the farther away trips to make it worthwhile. Those were significantly more expensive. Perhaps Koh Mook wasn’t the best option for scuba diving after all.
We kayaked north, eventually losing the need to pull over at each and every deserted beach that we came across. The beach on the north bay was entirely made up of small rocks rather than sand. We rounded the northwest corner which turned into an epic cliff landscape. Then arrived at Sapphire/Sabai Beach (depending on if you ask Google Maps or a local).
I laid out on the kayak for a while, watching the little sand bubbler crabs around me go about their business. Hundreds of little crabs, smaller than peas, were emerging out of their burrows just above the tide line. They would scoop up mouthfuls of sand with their little feeder arms, then immediately poop out perfectly globular little balls of sand, then repeat the whole process in a matter of seconds. The crabs were adorable, and I had never had the pleasure of meeting them before Koh Mook. A quick Google search informed me that they had actually been all over Thailand’s coasts at one point, but development had forced them away from many of the more popular islands.
About an hour and a half before low tide, we loaded into the kayak again and set out for the cave. As we entered the mouth of the cave, the guys decided to let me film with their GoPro while they paddled. Thus far I had thought that the difficulty steering was due to currents pushing us in various directions. Now that I wasn’t using all of my effort to steer us in one direction and then the other (form the front position no less), I suddenly realized that the currents were not to blame. Despite my attempted verbal cues to veer left, the kayak barely made it to the middle of the cave before ramming straight into the wall in the midst of the darkest point. I can only imagine how the video turned out.
The cave was busier with visitors than it had been a couple days ago. A dude from a sailboat had paddle boarded in with his dog, Molly. Molly was ecstatic to be inside such a cool hidden beach cave, as any good doggo would be, and wasted no time making friends with anyone willing to throw her a stick. We tried to wait around until everyone else had left so that we could hear the quiet peacefulness of nature again, but apparently everyone else was doing the same, so we eventually left.
The kayak back to Charlie Beach was the longest stretch so far. Muscles started to ache, and the only words spoken were the occasional, “We’re almost there!”
I forgot to check the time when we finally landed on the beach again, but it was just before sunset, meaning our journey around Koh Mook probably took about seven hours. Seven hours to kayak around an entire island, visit deserted beaches, visit the picturesque sand beach stretching way out to the east, visit beautiful Sabai surrounded by cliffs, and to visit the cave with the hidden pirate’s beach inside. Not bad for a day’s work! Dinner that night never tasted so good.
