With minimal kerfuffle, we arrived in Ranong and even found Ryan. We spent the night and then headed to Koh Payam (not to be confused with Koh PhaNgan) the next morning. What a wonderful place to relax for a couple of weeks. This was the place we had been hoping to find for many years!! The beach was beautiful and relaxing. There were almost no tourists there at all, which was quite a contrast to the full moon party (not that we went to it) scene of Pha Ngan, and we met a few very interesting people. The island had only one road on it, and three sets of bungalows. There were very few palm trees, but a lot of mangroves. It had a different look and feel, but we fell in love regardless.

We stayed for about two weeks doing absolutely nothing, but collecting shells from time to time, having fires on the beach and looking for "BIG FISH"!! It was paradise! There was one night that Marco, a German guy that Cheryl had taken quite a shine to, ran up to the main hut telling us that we had to get in the water immediately! I had never experienced anything like it, and it put our spit-fest in Halong Bay to shame; we actually got to swim with the phosphorescence this time. Every time we moved we were surrounded by millions of little stars in the water- magical!

We finally decided it was time to leave, but then we had to wait…and wait…and wait a little bit more. It would seem that about four days earlier, the rainy season just up and started out of nowhere. It's still lovely on the beach, even when it's raining, but it doesn't make for a very nice boat ride back to the mainland. This is especially true when the boats are nothing more than long tail canoes which are completely open and run on putt-putt motors. We got lucky and had only a little sprinkling on our way back. Payam was excellent and we could have easily spent another month there, but we had things to do.