Koh Muk

Day 247 (March 2, 2019) – Koh Muk, Thailand

When we started this trip I think I always had this vision of sometime along the way being dropped off on a remote and miniscule tropical island with perfect beaches and nothing to do but lay in the sun and read a book all day. This imaginary island was supposed to be the perfect get-away-from-it-all island with nothing to do and no way for people to reach you. Our trip to Koh Muk (also spelled Koh Mook) was pretty much as close as we were going to get to that tiny tropical island.

The ferry stopped at Koh Kraden on our way to Koh Muk. I would say Koh Kraden looked pretty nice! But it wasn't our stop.

Koh Muk is a small, but not remote, island off the southern coast of Thailand. We took a small ferry from Koh Lanta, which made stops at a couple small islands along the way. The scenery at each of them was beautiful and made us question our choice to stay on the island of our choosing, but upon arriving at Koh Muk we realized that it was just as beautiful as the rest.

The Koh Muk pier.

Our beach on Koh Muk.

There is really only one major road on the island, which connects one side of the island, where the ferry docks and a couple swanky resorts are located, to the other side where more budget accommodations were found. We checked into our hotel, which wasn’t anything fancy. Very bare bones accommodation without AC and a shared bathroom, but it was super affordable and close to the beach.

The paved road eventually gives way to a dirt road on the far side of the island where we were staying.

As you might imagine, there isn’t much to do on Koh Muk, but that’s sort of the point. We went to the beach every day, read a lot of books, ate at every restaurant within a 10-minute walk from us (there weren’t many), and usually ended up at the sole beach bar to watch the sun go down. The beach was really nice and quite picturesque. You could also see other islands off in the distance and lots of fancy boats coming through and parking not too far off shore.

From our walk around the island, near one of the fancy resorts.

We took a day to explore the rest of the island. It wasn’t too difficult. We walked from our side of the island to the other in about 30 minutes. We stopped to grab lunch and take a break from the heat at a small restaurant, then continued walking along the beach as it wrapped around the fancy resorts and we ended up back at the ferry pier where we had first arrived. We did a bit of shopping at the island’s only grocery store, then took a tuk-tuk back home.

Every day was insanely hot. We were sweating just sitting there. It didn’t help that we didn’t have AC, and just about everywhere we would go to eat or grab a cool drink was outdoors. AC was really only for the tourists and only in their hotel rooms. I’m sure they think we’re crazy for wanting to be so cold all the time.

Since we had the time on our hands, we also did a bit of trip planning. In this process we decided to stay a couple more nights on the island. We ended up moving to a cute bungalow that although a bit farther away from the beach had really fast internet, so we were pretty happy with it. The rest of our time on the island much the same as before. Lots of beach time, reading, eating tasty Thai food, and trying to stay as cool as possible.

Our little bungalow. Cute, but it got hot as hell during the day. 

Koh Muk was a great stop for us, but at the end of our four days I think we were starting to feel a little bit bored to be honest. It would have been the perfect escape had we had the stresses of “real life" and work, but we had been taking it easy on beautiful Thai beaches for three weeks at this point. We were as well rested as we were going to get. But I’m so glad we learned that tiny tropical islands do exist and they’re pretty much everything we imagined them to be. Next time we’re in need of a serious escape we’ll be thinking about another visit to Koh Muk.