Locations for "The Beach" (Book)

Locations Visited in The Beach

Bangkok

Khao San Road
Location: Banglamphu, Bangkok
Getting there: Khao San Road is near the Democracy Monument, parallel to Ratchadamnoen Klang road. Take ordinary bus Nos. 2, 15, 17, 44, 56 and 59 and air-con bus Nos. 11 and 12.
Lonely Planet: "If you are really on a tight budget head for the Khao San Road area. This is the main travellers' centre these days and new guesthouses are continually springing up. Rates in Banglamphu are generally the lowest in Bangkok and although some of the places are barely adequate (bedbugs are sometimes a problem), a few are excellent value if you can afford just a bit more. At the bottom end, rooms are quite small and the walls dividing them are thin - in fact most are indistinguishable from one another. Some places have small attached cafes with limited menus. Bathrooms are usually down the hall or out the back somewhere, mattresses may be on the floor."
The Beach: "Khao San Road was backpacker land. Almost all the buildings had been converted into guest-houses, there were long-distance telephone booths with air-con, the cafes showed brand-new Hollywood films on video, and you couldn't walk ten feet without passing a bootleg-tape stall. The main function of the street was as a decompression chamber for those about to leave or enter thailand, a halfway house between East and West." (page 1)

Bangkok to Ko Samui

"We took the night train south from Bangkok, first class. A waiter served a cheap meal of good food at the table, which at night flipped up to reveal spotless bunk-beds. At Surat Thani we got off the train and took a bus to Don Sak. From there we caught the Songserm ferry, straight to the pier at Na Thon. That was how we got to Ko Samui."

Surat Thani

Location: 651 kms south of Bangkok.
Getting there: Bus (11 hours), train (11 hours) or plane (1 hour 20 minutes). Trains for Surat, which don't really stop in Surat but in Phun Phin, 14 kms west of town, leave Bangkok's Hualamphong terminal.
Lonely Planet: "There is little of particular historical interest in Surat Thani, a busy commercial centre and port dealing in rubber and coconut, but the town's waterfront lends character nonetheless. For most people Surat Thani (often known as Surat) is only a stop on the way to Ko Samui or Ko Pha-Ngan, luscious islands 32 kms off the coast."

Ko Samui

Ko Samui
Location: 651 kms south of Bangkok and 32 kms off the coast from Surat Thani.
Getting there: Ferry boats go from Tha Thong, Ban Don and Don Sak, all close to Surat Thani.
Lonely Planet: "Ko Samui is Thailand's third-largest island at 247 sq km and is surrounded by 80 smaller islands. Six of these, Pha-Ngan, Ta Loy, Tao, Taen, Ma Ko and Ta Pao, are inhabited as well. The island has had a somewhat legendary status among travellers for the last 20 years or so, but it wasn't until the late 1980's that it escalated to the touristic proportions of other similar gateways found between Goa and Bali. Since the advent of the Don Sak auto/bus ferry and the opening of the airport, things have been changing fast. During the high seasons, late December to February and July to August, it can be difficult to find a place to stay, even though most beaches are crowded with bungalows and resorts. The port town of Na Thon teems with foreign travellers getting on and off the ferry boats.
Links on the internet:
http://www.sawadee.com/samui/ - the homepage for Ko Samui
http://www.samuicam.com/ - A live camera set up on Chaweng beach

Hat Chaweng
Location: A long beach on the eastern side of Ko Samui.
Getting there: Songtaew bus from Na Thon.
Lonely Planet: "Hat Chaweng, Samui's longest beach, also has the island's highest concentration of bungalows and tourist hotels. There is a commercial 'strip' behind the central beach jam-packed with restaurants, souvenir shops and discos. The beach is beautiful here...Chaweng has km after km of bungalows - perhaps 70 or more in all - so have a look around before deciding on a place."
The Beach: "Our jeep from the Ko Samui port to the Chaweng beach resort was a big open-top Isuzu. On the left the sea lay blue between rows of coconut palms, and on the right a jungle-covered slope rose steeply. Ten travellers sat behind the driver's cabin, our bags clamped between our knees, our heads rolling with the corners. One had a baseball bat resting against his shoulder, another held a camera on his lap. Brown faces flashed past us through the green.
'Delta One-Niner," I muttered. 'This is Alpha patrol.'
The jeep left us outside a decent-looking bunch of beach huts, but backpacker protocol demanded we check out the competition. After half an hour of slogging across the hot sand, we returned to the huts we'd first seen. Private showers, a bedside fan, a nice restaurant that looked on to the sea. Our huts faced each other over a gravel path lined with flowers. It was tres beau, Francoise said with a happy sigh, and I agreed." (page 37)

The Beach

Location: The exact location of The Beach is unkown as the island is left un-named.
The Beach

The cliff and waterfall: "It was the height of a four-storey building - the kind of height I hate to stand upright near. To gauge the drop I had to crawl to the cliff edge on my belly, afraid that the sense of balance which allows me to stand on a chair would desert me and I would lunge drunkenly forward to my death.

"On either side the cliff continued, eventually curving around into the sea, then unbroken, rejoining the land on the far side. It was as if a giant circle had been cut out of the island to enclose the lagoon in a wall of rock - just as Zepth had described. From where we sat, we could see that the sea-locked cliffs were no more than thirty metres thick, but a passing boat could never guess what lay beyond them. They would see a continuous jungle-topped coastline. The lagoon was presumably supplied by underwater caves and channels.

"The falls dropped into a pool from which a quick-flowing stream ran into the trees. the highest trees were more than equal to our height. If they'd been a little closer to the precipice we could have used them to get down - and getting down was the big problem. The drop was too sheer and too far to consider climbing." p. 82

The Lagoon: "The lagoon itself was almost perfectly divided between land and sea. I estimated its diameter at a mile, though I wouldn't rely on the accuracy of this guess. Now nearer to the seaward cliffs than on the waterfall, I could make out features in the rock-face I hadn't seen before. Along the watermark were black hollows and caves. They looked as if they penetrated the cliff deeply - perhaps deeply enough to provide a passage for a small boat. the sea itself was punctuated by protruding boulders, slick where the waves lapped against them, flattened into slabs by centuries of tropical rain." p. 102

The Camp: "At first glance the camp was close to how I'd imagined it might be. There was a large, dusty clearing surrounded by rocket-ship trees and dotted with makeshift bamboo huts. A few canvas tentsd looked incongruous, but otherwise it was very like the kind of South-East-Asian villages I'd seen many times before. At the far end was a large construction, a longhouse, and beside it the stream from the waterfall re-emerged, bending around to run along the edge of the clearing. From the straightness of its banks, it had obviously been deliberately diverted." p. 87

"I counted nine tents in the clearing and five huts, not including the longhouse. The tents were only used for sleeping - inside the flaps I could see backpacks and clothes, and in one I even saw a Nintendo Gameboy - but the huts all seemed to have functional uses. apart from the toilet, there was a kitchen and a washing area, also fed by tributaries. the other huts were for storage. One contained carpentary tools and another some boxes of tinned food." p. 100

Ko Pha-Ngan

Ko Pha-Ngan

Location: About a half-hour boat ride north of Ko Samui.
Getting there: By boat from Ko Samui or Surat Thani.
Lonely Planet: "Ko Pha-Ngan has become the island of choice for those who find Samui too crowded. It started out as a sort of 'back-door escape' from Samui but it is well established now, with a regular boat service and over 180 places to stay around the 190 sq km island. Although hordes of backpackers have discovered Ko Pha-Ngan, a lack of roads has so far spared it from tourist-hotel and package tour development. Except at the island's part capital, Hat Rin, the island hasn't yet been cursed with video and blaring stereos."

Hat Rin
Location: South-east on Ko Pha-Ngan
Lonely Planet: "This long cape juts south-east and has beaches along both its westward and eastward sides. The eastward side has the best beach, Hat Rin Nok, a long sandy strip lined with coconut palms. The snorkelling is pretty good, but between October and March the surf can be a little hairy. The western side more or less acts as an overflow for people who can't find a place to stay on the eastern side, as the beach is often too shallow for swimming. together these beaches have become the most popular on the island.
The Beach: "I was keen to get to Ko Pha-Ngan. Although I'd been told it was past its best, Hat Rin still had a slightly legendary reputation. Like Patpong Road or the opium treks in the Golden Triangle, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about." (page 166)
"Before I'd been looking at Hat Rin with a detached curiosity, and now I was looking at it with hatred. I could sense shit all around me; Thais smiling like sharks, and careless hedonism, too diligently pursued to ring true. Most of all, I could pick up the scent of decay. It hung over Hat Rin like the sandflies that hung over the sunbathers, zoning in on the smell of sweat and sweet tanning lotion. The serious travellers had already moved on to the next island in the chain, the intermediate travellers were wondering where all the life had gone, and the tourist hordes were ready to descend on their freshly beaten track." (page 177)

Other Places Mentioned in The Beach

Patpong

Location: Bangkok
Lonely Planet: "The world famous Patpong Road area has calmed down a bit over the years. These days it has more of an open-air market feel as several of the newer bars are literally on the street, and vendors set up shop in the evening hawking everything from roast squid to fake designer watches. On Patpong's two parallel lanes there are around 38 go-go bars, plus a sprinkling of restaurant and cocktail bars. The downstairs clubs feature go-go dancing while up-stairs the real raunch is kep behind closed doors."
The Beach: "Around five-thirty a few bedroom-door bolts clicked open as the early-bird travellers emerged and the die-hard party-goers from Patpong returned. (page 11)

Chiang Mai

Location: 700 kms north-west of Bangkok.
Getting there: By air (30 minutes), bus (12 hours) or train (11 hours) from Bangkok.
Lonely Planet: "Many people stay in Chiang Mai longer than planned because of the high quality of accommodation, food and shopping, the cool nights (in comparison to Central Thailand), the international feel of the city and the friendliness of the people. Also, the city is small enough to get around by bicycle. And with the increasing number of cultural and spiritual learning experiences available in Chiang Mai these days, the city has become much more than just a quick stop on the Northern Thailand tourist circuit." Most backpackers head to Chiang Mai for hill-tribe trekking, rafting and to visit the infamous Golden Triangle.
The Beach: Etienne talking to Richard.
"'A few days in Bangkok is enough. We have been north.'
'Chiang Mai?'
'Yes, we went on a trek. We rafted on a river. Very boring, no?' He sighed and leant backwards, resting his back on the stone step behind him.
'Boring?'
Etienne smiled. 'Raft, trek. I want to do something different, and everybody wants to do something different. But we all do the same thing. There is no....ah...'
'Adventure.'" (page 19)

The quotes on this page came from the "The Beach" by Alex Garland and "Lonely Planet guide book for Thailand" by Joe Cummings. Both of these books can be bought at discounted prices at amazon.com by clicking on the book covers.

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