Ang Thong Marine National Park, Thailand
06 October 2014 | Koh Ang Thong, Thailand
Steve
Visiting the scenic Ang Thong National Park and its 42 islands has been a pleasant surprise. The unique island group with its limestone formations, hidden lagoon, hiking trails, stone bridge made it a very memorable stop over for the last 4 days.
We anchored in 5m at Ko Ang Thong park headquarters which was busy with tour boats and tourists from about 10-3pm - thereafter it was all ours - nice. The cost was 650 Bhats for 5 days including 3 persons and the yacht. We were requested to use the mooring buoys but the two we tried each dragged after testing them so they were OK with us anchoring.
This isn’t a place for deep keel sail boats as its generally uncharted with numerous hidden outcrops or coral heads (bommies) or rocks in murky water. We chose to rather explore the area with our dingy, running around a majority of the islands including the emerald lagoon lake or Thale Nai located on Koh Mae Ko which is connected to the sea by an underwater tunnel presumed collapsed and submerged. It has a healthy stock of fish including rays.
We climbed a very steep hike to the 500m lookout which rewarded us with a spectacular view of the island group to the north (attached) and a few helicopter photos of Emerald Sea. This was quite a climb over serrated limestone rocks … but great cardio!!
There is a low pressure system arriving with gale winds forecasted tomorrow so we decided the anchorage at Ang Thong wasn’t sufficiently protective enough with its tunnel drafts, eddies, currents so we picked up the hook and sailed easterly the 36km in a strong breeze (22-28kts) over to Koh Samui and back to Bo Phut bay where we can wait out this 4 day gale and do some provisioning.