Thailand and its endless string of islands has a vibe for everyone. Want to learn how to scuba dive? Go to Koh Tao. Want to experience the legendary full moon parties? Koh Pha Ngan. Pamper yourself at a luxury resort? Koh Samui. But what about an island for those who want a sense of what Thailand was like before the hoards of tourists swarmed the shores? Did those places still exist? I wanted to believe that they did. They just had to. You know what I’m talking about, those beaches that you hear stories about, where people go, and then never leave again. Surely the beautiful places in the world haven’t all turned to crowds, and brunch cafes, and waxing studios. After Koh Lipe turned out to be such a tragic disappointment, I set out to find them. Goodbye, Banana Pancake Trail. 

I had a list of islands I’d heard brief mention of on various blogs. I ordered them based on their distance from Koh Lipe, starting with the closest, and then researched the accommodation available, crossing the ones off the list that only had luxury resorts.

Koh Mook, or “Pearl Island” seemed to be the best option to begin my journey. The speedboat from Koh Lipe took three hours, and dropped me and a handful of other guests off on a beach lined with those colorful beach umbrellas that I haven’t seen since the 90s. A place stuck two decades behind. I hadn’t been sure what to expect; the information online was limited, but it definitely didn’t prepare me for a trip on a time machine. The resort in ruins on the other end of the beach added to the air of being lost in time. 

As I carried my bag up the beach, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I had just assumed the island would be walkable based on its size, but looking at the sheer cliffs on either side of the beach, I realized even a short walk might be entirely uphill. So I wandered over to a cluster of motorbikes with the little metal sidecar contraptions welded on. They all sported the same faded paint that was impossible to distinguish the original color from. They all looked completely rusted over and like they might fall apart at any moment. 

I had never really taken a moment to consider what “undeveloped” might mean on one of these islands. “Pristine” was a word that had bounced around in the back of my mind. ‘No improvements since the first few modern innovations were introduced,’ was a different sort of vibe. 

I shared the ride with someone else fresh off the boat. The combined weight of the two of us and our luggage proved to be too much to get the rusty contraption out of the sand. I had to laugh when the driver hopped off of the bike and pulled it out of the rut as if it were weightless. It probably was pretty close to that. 

There was one hostel on the island, but after one review had likened it to a prison, I had booked a little bamboo bungalow instead. The Thai couple who ran the bungalows welcomed me with the warm smiles and openheartedness that had been so lacking on Koh Lipe. He had a gentle face, and inquisitive eyes. She was bubbling with personality and had no qualms about speaking girlish, broken English to anyone and everyone. 

My bungalow was a cute little hut with just enough room for a mattress and space to walk on one side. A concrete bathroom was attached to the back. There was no flush button or lever on the toilet, only a bucket full of water to flush it manually. A worn-out, toy-sized, plastic mirror that was too small to actually use, and a fake flower were the only decorations. I know a lot of people who would have seen that and gone, aw hell no, but for me, it was the picture of perfection after the cramped hostel on Koh Lipe. I was so grateful to have some space to myself. The rustic hut instilled a sense of humility, as I realized that if I were stranded on a desert island, I probably wouldn’t be able to construct even something this basic for myself. I pretended I had though, and felt like Robinson Crusoe. 

After dropping off my bag, I went for a walk to check out my surroundings and to see what food was around. There were only a handful of roads on the island, all zig zagging their way from Charlie Beach on the southwest corner, to Sivalai on the east side. I was roughly in the middle of the developed corner of the island. You can see the point marked Bamboo Huts on the map. 

I had wanted quiet, and that wish was fully granted. Occasionally a local on a rusted motorbike would putter by. Sometimes I would hear a chicken rustling in the brush on the side of the road. But those sounds were few and far between. Mostly it was dead quiet. So this was was what a sleepy little fishing village of an island looked like before the influx of tourism. 

I turned onto the road (and when I say road, it was a concrete sidewalk) with signs pointing to How High Bar. Surely a rasta bar would be in an area with a few other restaurants. The few restaurants along this stretch were cute, tidy little huts, with some plastic chairs in the dirt outside. All of them looked deserted. Nothing between them was landscaped. It was all dirt from where the jungle had been cleared, and jungle beyond that. 

Voices from a restaurant called Balcony Hill broke the silence like music to my ears. On Koh Lipe I had sought out solitude with so many crowds around, but now with nothing but solitude all around me, I was eager for the reminder that I wasn’t the only one on this island. 

After a lunch of underwhelming green curry, I continued along the sleepy road, and tried to make my way over to Sivalai Beach. Information on the island may have been limited, but I had scoped it out on Google Maps satellite images, and seen the long stretch of white sand beach extending out to a point. Gotta love technology. 

It was low tide, which left the north side of Silvalai completely dry, as far as the eye could see. No wonder the pier on this side extended out nearly half a kilometer. 

The sand below the tide line was speckled with millions of tiny little balls of sand, about the size of pinheads. For every thousand or so balls, there was one slightly larger hole in the sand. Something was living in there and excavating the balls. I stayed very still and waited for the creatures to reemerge. Crabs! Sand bubbler crabs according to a quick web search. They feed by scooping up the sand, filtering out the nutrients, and depositing the little balls, which are then washed away when the tide returns. Until then, the sand balls form circular patterns like intricate little mandalas all over the beach.  

Here is a video about the sand bubbler crab from the “True Facts” Youtube channel. If you’ve never watched this guy’s videos, you should. They’re hilarious. 

I made my way to the picturesque portion of the beach, where there were several nice resorts. Ah bliss. This was more the beach I had dreamt of finding on Koh Lipe. An expanse of empty, white, powdery sand complete with turquoise water, palm trees, and mountains in the background. This would be the spot I would return to and lounge in the sun while sipping cocktails through my stainless steel straw. For now it was enough to know that this was here. Today was for exploring and getting a feel for the island. 

My wanderings back towards my bamboo bungalow led me through the local village, which was a very sorry sight indeed. I’ve never seen so much trash in an area that wasn’t a garbage dump. If I were to show you a photo, you probably would assume at first glance that it was a garbage dump. The village wasn’t the only place that was trashed, although that was the worst of it. Plastic bottles and eating utensils lined all the streets as well. 

Please people, for the love of all that is beautiful in the world, think about the plastic you are consuming. You use a coffee lid or a container of fancy, pre-cut fruit for a few minutes, and then it continues to exist for hundreds of years. Maybe it ends up in a landfill if you are lucky. Maybe it gets blown away by the wind. It doesn’t weigh much after all. Maybe it lands in the ocean somewhere down the road. The World Economic Forum estimates that a truckload of plastic enters the oceans every minute. That trash gets pushed around by currents, and ends up on beaches that might otherwise be considered “pristine.” Koh Mook should have been pristine, but even without many people around, the evidence of human consumption was rampant. My heart broke a little bit that day to see the beautiful, isolated island I had been searching for, completely trashed. 

Where there weren’t piles of rubbish, there were unfinished construction sites. It was as though someone had had the idea to develop the island at one point, and then ran out of funds a few weeks into the project and just left everything as was. What a strange place. 

As the sun began to sink lower in the sky and turn bright orange, I followed its trajectory back to Charlie Beach. There was the old resort off to one side, quietly lying in ruins. Fletch had jokingly told me just a few hours ago that he hoped Koh Mook wouldn’t be apocalypse-quiet for me, like Oman had been. It was a bit post-apocalyptic, but in a less unsettling way. Sifah, Oman had felt like civilization had just ceased to exist, leaving behind the grandeur of a city that gave off a sense of hauntedness with no one to fill it. Koh Mook felt more like Jurassic park. 

“Life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously.” – Jurassic Park

Koh Mook felt like someone had tried to tame it with resorts, and the island had broken free of attempted development. Koh Mook would not be groomed, Koh Mook would be a wild island, there for the enjoyment of anyone with an adventurous spirit. 

And so the adventurous-at-heart would gather on Charlie Beach every night to watch the sun go down, while drinking cheap drinks from a few tables and huts set up as makeshift bars that played covers of pop songs. Here the vibe was free-spirited and authentic. Here there were no zombies, silently gathering to crowd the beach while pretending that no one else was around. No, these were the explorers who would find their own island vibes, not be told what a “quiet island” should look like. 

Over the following days, I would learn that Koh Mook’s vibe would indeed be adventure. Go to Koh Tao for diving. Go to Koh Pha Ngan for full moon parties. Go to Koh Samui for resorts. Go to Koh Mook for off-the-beaten-track adventures. Check back soon for island hopping, hiking, kayaking, caves, and hidden beaches.