Jungle Treks and Elephant Lessons on Thai Islands

A day-trip from Koh Samui, exploring the islands of Ang Thong Marine Park—panoramics vistas, the hidden "The Beach" lagoon at Koh Mae Koh, snorkeling, kayaking, and an elephant ride to cap it all odd

The author on his jungle trek—at this point, only ankle deep in the water. (Photo by Frances C. Sayers)

I was in a

Southeast Asian

jungle, waist-deep in stagnant water and having Vietnam-movie flashbacks, when something slithered past my leg. I slipped off the underwater root I was treading and plunged into the dark pool up to my chest.

Spluttering, I hauled myself partway up the slippery submerged bank, turned to my girlfriend, Frances, and said. "Okay, you're right. He's definitely lost."

Sami, our half-Thai/half-Jamaican guide with a high-pitched giggle and Rastafarian tendencies, had promised to lead our group of ten to a spectacular waterfall on one of the 43 largely uninhabited islands of

Ang Thong Marine Park.

Problem was, he wasn't entirely sure where it was—or if this was the right island.

This was near the end of our full-day Ang Thong excursion from nearby

Ko Samui,

the main island in the

Gulf of Thailand

(the side of Thailand's southern peninsula that was completely unaffected by the 2004 tsunami).

Though Sami was friendly and laid-back, he spent far less energy guiding than he did hitting on the trio of cute Singaporean girls and scoring ganja off the Israeli couple who spent the entire day alternately sleeping aboard the boat and toking on the beaches.

But a dazed-and-confused guide only added to the surreal experience of Ang Thong. After breakfasting on the boat during the two-hour ride to the park, we paddled sit-atop kayaks to the shores of

Ko Mae Ko.

Sami scampered ahead while the rest of us laboriously zigzagged up a cliff path and scrambled through a narrow rock cleft. I arrived first to find Sami slouching against the platform railing.

"Nice view, yah?" Sami grinned and swept his thin, dark arm across the scene. Before us, the jungle opened up to reveal Ko Mae Ko's famed hidden lagoon, a massive azure eye of crystalline water fully encircled by sheer karst cliffs dripping with vegetation.

The hidden lagoon on Ko Mae Ko was the inspiration for Alex Garland's novel (and the Leonardo di Caprio movie) "The Beach" (Photo by Frances C. Sayers)

Sami giggled and bobbed his head, jamming along to an unheard beat. "This is where they get idea for

The Beach.

You know: Leonardo di Caprio movie?"

That, of course, I already knew. Spend more than five minutes on a Thai island and you can't help but run into references to Alex Garland's cult novel—and the movie it inspired—about backpackers who think they've found a paradise beyond the pages of their guidebooks.

With the motorboat anchored a ways off the next island, Frances and I battled the ocean swells to get our all-but-unsteerable kayak ashore. A stiff, 20-minute hike from the beach led to a mountaintop view across the island-dotted sea.

By afternoon, after a fruit-and-curry picnic on the boat, the seas were too rough for the tour's usual kayak/snorkel trip along the cave-ridden coast of an outer island, so Sami suggested our ill-fated hike.

By the time we hit the long pool of slithery things, Sami admitted he had just assumed we would run across a big waterfall at some point. Most of the group grumbled on our way back to the claptrap fishing village where we'd parked our boat and our stoned Israelis, but I didn't mind.

The hour-long hike up a steep mountain stream, getting wonderfully wet and clambering over a hundred micro-cascades, was the taste of jungle trek I'd craved.

We returned to

Ko Samui

—at the docks, Sami said good-bye and headed off to party with the Israelis—for the included cheesy, 20-minute

elephant ride

through a coconut plantation. It was a lurching experience, a bit like a drunken teeter-totter ride, only smellier, designed mainly as a photo-op.

Paddling ashore in the Ang Thong Marine Park. (Photo by Frances C. Sayers)

In a largely pantomimed conversation with our driver, I learned that our elephant's name was Dao, and she was 33 years old. When we paused in a clearing, the driver motioned for me slither off the passenger platform onto our ride's neck. As the sun set over the jungle canopy, he showed me how to slip my knees behind Dao's rough ears and take an elephant for a spin.

When You Go

Samui

is a one-hour, $50 flight from Bangkok on

Bangkok Airways

(+66-022-655-555, www.bangkokair.com). Or you can get a full

vacation package

—including roundtrip airfare to Thailand, one night at the start and two nights at the end in a Bangkok hotel, roundtrip airfare to Koh Samui and four nights in a hotel on the island—starting from $1,099 per person, based on two people traveling together, by booking at

Go-Today.com.

Bang in the center of four-mile-long

Chaweng Beach

sits

The Island

(+66-077-230-751, www.theislandsamui.com), a resort of large stylish A/C bungalows starting at $35—though we plumped for a thatch-roofed villa right on the beach ($62-$85), mere steps from the massage mats and the wooden tables set in the sand for fantastic, inexpensive dinners.

For a fine-dining treat, wander up the beach to

Budsaba Restaurant at Muang Kulay Pan Hotel

(+66-077-422-305, www.kulaypan.com), recline on cushions in a private sala (miniature open-sided hut on stilts), and enjoy live traditional music (Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sun) and a veritable feast for $16.

That all-day

Ang Thong Marine Park tour

costs $45 at Sea Safari Thailand (+66-076-254501, www.islandsafaritour.com), including meals. No guarantee you'll get Sami. Or you can book an Ang Thong or other Samui tour right now at www.viator.com.