Koh Tao sat for ages as a beautiful island full of untouched mountains beaches and bays. The Thai people first used the island for a prison, isolated from the mainland, but a beautiful location for the countries criminals. A local told us that even today 75% of Thais can't swim, which made the paradise island an ideal location for a prison.
The prison closed, and Koh Tao sat undisturbed until the 1980s, when foreigners first made teh long sea journey to explore the coral reefs. More and more tourists came and along with them, entreprenurial Thais to sell corn on the cob on the beach, build bungalows near the sea, drive tourists to a fro on 4 by 4s on the hilly roads, and navigate from beach to beach in water taxis.
Tourists here are from all over the world, but seem to be mostly European. Thailand from Minneapolis was a 17 hour flight, but from Europe, it is cut in half. The island completely and totally caters to tourists, with no other industry on the island besides tourism. Many of the Thais we have spoken with moved here in teh last few years as the island has gotten more popular.
This is not the real Thailand, it is its own world where everything is built exclusively to cater to tourists, and tourists completely rule. But it is beautiful, calm and charming. The island is very laid back and more places are not too busy, to the chagrin of the restaurant/bar owners. The dive shop fellow said that it has been quiet here after the airport shut down and Bangkok and the worldwide recession. There does seem to be more restaurants, bars, dive shops and motos than there are tourists.
English is definitely the common denominator with all on the island. The Thais speak enough to to their job. We ate at a restaurant up from the beachj area that was run by an entire Thai family. THe restaurant doubled as their house. THe two women were the main waitresses, maybe 30 years old, because the spoke the best english. Tourists from all over sat around us speaking german, french and italian, but when it came to order, English was teh common language. In bangkok we ordered food on teh street just by poiunting at what looked good.
Koh Tao is a very easy place to get a small piece of Thailand along with lovely scenery and a million dollar view for under $20 a night.
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Everything looks beautiful!
ReplyDeleteMiss you guys!