I decided to take a day trip today to the nearby Angthong National Marine Park. Located just northwest of Koh Samui, Angthong is an archipelago comprising 42 islands of various sizes, mostly rocky cliffs jutting out of the water. Several are larger and have dense vegetation and jungles on them. Others are just massive rocks crashing into the ocean. It’s really quite a delight sailing through the many islands in this archipelago, as the visual effect is rather dramatic.
We started off the morning at the northern most part of the archipelago, to go snorkeling in pristine waters surrounded by massive cliffs and overhanging rocks. It was amazing. I saw much of the same fish and coral as yesterday at Koh Tao and Nangyuan, but it was great seeing these again. The waters are very calm around all these islands and it was like snorkeling in a big pool with awesome wildlife.
We snorkeled by these cliffs. At the bottom the rocks have eroded, so there is a rock overhang with lots of brightly-colored coral
After an hour in this location, we sailed our way south through the many islands in the park. The scenery was absolutely stunning.
Sailing south in Angthong Park. The big rock in the middle is called Monkey Island because apparently it looks like a monkey
Sailing through the islands
We stopped at one of the larger islands for a couple of hours to kayak around the islands nearby, eat lunch, and relax on the beach. It was great way to spend the afternoon.
The quiet beach where we spent most of the afternoon
After lunch, we went back north a little bit to one of the islands we had passed earlier in the day. We spent about an hour here. This island has a very nice scenic view point that you can hike up to, which leads to an Emerald Lagoon–it’s a sea water lagoon, but the water level is higher than that of the surrounding sea, and the color is a bright green. It’s really quite lovely.
View of the Emerald Lagoon
View of the archipelago from the top. It took over 500 steep steps to reach the top of the hill for this view.
We hung out on the beach and in the water. I had gotten a lot of sun yesterday so I tried to spend most of the day today in the shade. Luckily, with the rock overhangs on these islands, it was easy to find shady spots beneath the rocks while floating around in the sea.
At around 3pm we headed back to Samui. The photo below are some the last rock formations we passed leaving the park. Angthong is really quite close to Samui. You can vaguely make out the outlines of some of the closer islands on the horizon from Samui. In this photo, you can see the faint outline of Koh Phangan on the left and Koh Samui on the right.
Leaving Angthong National Marine Park, with faint outlines of Koh Samui on the right and Phangan on the left in the distance.
It was a great way to spend my last day here on the islands. Tomorrow I head back to Bangkok to wrap up my trip!
Jules Traveler 