The quietest island in Thailand

After learning all abour raw vegan food in Thailand at Evason Hua Hin, we headed south to the quietest island in Thailand and booked to stay for a blissful 7 weeks. This place really is one of the few places left in Thailand that mass tourism has forgotten. What we didn’t plan for was getting getting writer’s block on the quietest island in Thailand.This place is perfect for getting in that creative flow and writing. There are few distractions; no parties, only a couple of low key bars, no jet skis, markets, walking streets, pub streets, cars, not even decent wifi. Nothing.

The local pub is pretty quiet

We’d planned to use this time to focus and do lots of blog housekeeping, catch up with writing and generally get back in the swing of things following our trip back home after 2 years on the road, where productivity seemed to grind to a halt.

We often tell ourselves that we’d complete everything we want to do “if only we had time”, but here we were with all the time in the world, with none of the distractions that travelling brings and we were barely able to open our laptops.

At first we put our mañana attitude down to just needing a little holiday but as the days, then weeks passed where we’d sit down to write and work and it would feel like wading through treacle we began to see there was something else going on. This magical island we’d made our temporary home was refusing to let us work.

Caryl trying to work but actually just taking photos of herself

Days were spent lazing in hammocks where we read more books than we have in our whole two and a bit years of travel. We’d snorkel, do yoga, jump in a boat and head off on adventures with our crazy Italian friend to clean up plastic from forgotten islands. We chatted to people, from all walks of life and parts of the world who each had a different story to tell; we drank an awful lot of green tea.

Hammock lazing for life

Hammocking instead of blogging

We walked on the beach, swam in the sea and slept a lot; it’s amazing just how much sleep we had and there always seemed room for more. We watched a solar eclipse, celebrated Caryl’s 40th, got addicted to coconut shakes and mango smoothies.

Amazing birthday presents arrived by magic

It’s hard to work when there is solar eclipse watching to be done

People say that this island is special (and we’d agree); it either welcomes you and gives you the gift you need or it spits you out. Each day we’d see new people arrive, some who would cancel their onward travel plans and stay longer and some who get the next boat out the following day complaining that there was “nothing to do”.

For us this island is paradise, the lack of development has given us a small place where wildlife is abundant and where watching bugs, birds and lizards takes the place of watching TV. Below the ocean the coral reef and the fish that call home create a whole underwater landscape which opens up to you when dip your head below the water.

With little or no action being the flavour of the month, we sat back and embraced getting writers block in the quietest island in Thailand. We let the island work it’s magic.

A pretty peaceful kind of magic on the quietest island in Thailand

Sometimes doing nothing is the best action you can take. Sometimes when you find paradise you’ve just to spend every waking minutes letting it all soak in.

Do nothing but breathe it all in