The days always dawn late for us on Koh Jum, as we are often up late the previous night, lying on the beach, star gazing and moon watching. The last couple of nights the full moon has literally lit up the beach, the waves reflecting moonlight as they scurry along the shore.

Our long days here on this tropical island tend to start with a swim in the warm and calm, crystal clear emerald waters. We coax the children to join us, which they invariably do, but only after we are done and ready for breakfast.

The days are hot but perfect in the shade or in the water. The beach is lined with casuarina trees and we are often found to be sheltering under their fern like fronds coercing our petulant pupil to do his school work or simply reading our books to the sounds and sights of our surroundings. We are rarely  found in any other attire than our bathers.

A refreshing cool breeze always seems to blow in this southern corner of the island, which keeps the humidity of the northern jungle end of the island at bay and for us completes our current idyllic environment. As is it I have the impression of being in some kind of earthly paradise.

We planned on being here on Koh Jum for 10 nights and then continuing on to some other inviting Thai destination, but it’s too good here and time has slipped on, the other destinations will be for another trip. 

Occasionally we reflect on our laziness and concoct a Plan. So it was that yesterday we commandeered our resort’s kayak and we decided it time for an Island Adventure. All that lazing languidly by the sand and sea had whet our appetites for something a little perilous. One kayak, five of us, a kilometer of deep dangerous tropical sea to cross, to land on a dot of an island, where it turns out all the bothersome monkeys from Koh Jum are put to reflect on their behaviour. The savage sea creatures in the watery chasm between our island and the dot island must have fled from us as we advanced in our blue vessel as we saw only a couple of enormous pink jellyfish doing their languid tropical thing.

The dot island is actually a miniature version of the little island on which are based, with a couple of beautiful beaches, a rocky cliff line, some caves, topped with jungle and mangroves that come right down to the beach.

Elliot landed first and so has rights to naming the island. I humbly suggested “Sabrina Island” but he prefers ” Little Koh Monkey Jum”, not realising how appropriate his naming is (we conceal the monkey information).

As we are not that brave, we didn’t actually explore any part apart from the gorgeous sandy sea which is interspersed with inviting rock pools. Here the children bathed and wallowed and splashed and tried to catch shiny little green silvery minnows which wandered closeby in great big schools. 

Turns out it wasn’t “really much of an adventure” according to Samuel. Well clearly he was not propelling the kayak. Tim was our ferryman and shook off his island habits for the day by making 6 crossings to get us all on and off the island.

He also was very useful in intimidating the one big fat grumpy looking monkey we saw, not wanting to take any chances after our perilous Periyar adventure.

Today another day dawns, we fall into the natural optimised rythym of past days and I find it’s nearly time for lunch already. Time is governed by tummy rumbles. A short walk along the beach to the neighbouring very chilled out resort sorts us out.

Their restaurant has the best value and tastiest fresh fruit shakes and the most enormous servings of food we’ve had so far. Island life can be expensive and we walked long and far to fill our tummies previous to this fortuitous find next door.

We’ll be sorry to leave this beautiful location with its soft sands and clean clear warm waters not to mention the kind Thai people. However, we will soon leave and we can’t conceal the fact that we are so looking forward to our next destination, Australia.  The return home part 2!