No Injuries: Motorbiking on Koh Phangan!

When we arrived to Koh Phangan, we realized that by far the best way to see the island was by motorbike. Everyone does it—it is incredibly cheap (around 6 US bucks a day), incredibly flexible (no need to call taxis for every destination), and safe in that most of the roads are very empty and there aren’t many cars on the island. 

We only had 2 hesitations. Firstly, both of us have many close friends and family members who have been in bad motorcycle accidents. Secondly (and very significantly), neither of us had ever driven a motorbike before 😂.

We ended up renting the motorbike…after deciding to wake up at 6 a.m. the next day to learn on completely empty roads and get comfortable with the bike (and also to get used to driving on the left side of the road). I am not going to lie, I am definitely not a natural, but I picked it up very fast. To any family reading this, we also both agreed that driving 40 km per hour was the fastest safe speed to go.

Just like that the whole island was ours! We biked to several waterfalls, a Chinese Buddhist temple, and a few beaches around the island. My favorite day was when we biked to Coconut Beach and then hiked to Bottle Beach. The 25 minute bike ride to get there was breathtaking with the wind in our faces and the morning sun-rays shining through the tropical trees around us. The hike was a grueling hour and a half climb over boulders and roots in the suffocating humidity. But when we arrived at the pristine beach at the end, it was so worth the work out. Its my favorite beach I’ve been to in Thailand so far—it was the perfect mix of lively but not too crowded, probably because it is difficult to get to (it is typically only accessed by boat or by the difficult hike we did). We ordered coconuts and passion fruit smoothies, joined in on some pick-up volleyball, and made friends with a professional photographer who took insane photos of us. He even compiled them all on a personal website for us out of generosity! 

As I write this, we are on our ferry to Koh Tao island to get our scuba certifications—open water for me and advanced open water for Kenzie! Stay tuned for more updates.