Songkran. The word strikes fear in the heart of expats everywhere. Every year around mid April, Thai’s celebrate their new year with a water festival known as Songkran (from the Sanskrit, meaning “move into”). This has evolved from its original tradition of making offerings to monks, spring cleaning, and pouring water on Buddha statues into a 3 day water fight and wet t-shirt competition across the country. Often nobody is spared as gangs of teenagers ride around in the back of pickup trucks pouring buckets of water on hapless victims. Basically it’s a major pain the arse as wallets, passports and mobile phones often get completely soaked into the bargain as well.

So what’s a man to do? Get the fuck out of Dodge and onto Fantasy Island, that’s what. YMOTG and MyTGF boarded a bus at 11.30pm and arrived at the pier in the middle of Baht Fahk Noh Wair at four in the morning, with another four hours to wait in the dark for the boat that would carry us to paradise on earth – Koh Kood Island.

Koh Kood is the fourth largest island in Thailand and the furthest south in the Trat Sea, meaning most folks won’t make the effort to get there. But the photos on the resort’s website promised a veritable feast of white sandy beaches, clear blue skies, and great food. We took the 3 days + 2 nights air-con room package and looked forward to an unforgettable holiday away from the heat, smog and annoyances of “Songkran in the City”.

The island itself is quite beautiful and the resort is clean, well-maintained, and well-run – except for the air-conditioning in the room that we’d paid extra for but were only allowed to turn on of an evening. We also had one spot of bother when it came time for lunch. When making the booking by phone, I’d told the staff member that I didn’t eat seafood or pork, and was told that it was not a problem; there would be plenty of food for me. Of course when it came time for the first meal, we were informed that the package included 3 days of nothing but seafood buffets, and there was no beef to be had on the island. Not a sausage.

Some heavy negotiation began between MyTGF and the resort manager regarding my dietary habits. I only picked up one bit of the conversation that went something like:

MyTGF: “He only eat beef and chicken, no pork or seafood”
Manager: “ohhhh! He is Jewish?”
MyTGF: “OH NO! He is AUSSIE!”

So the end result was that the staff cooked their entire frozen supply of chicken for me over the course of the stay, and I craved beef like a junkie craves the needle or like a Thai taxi driver craves Chang beer for breakfast.

After checking in and eating lunch (chicken for me, fresh prawns, rice and soup for her), we were told that the afternoon’s pre-arranged activity was to see the island’s waterfall. The resort’s website describes it as:

“Khlong-Jao waterfall…is a very beautiful / famous waterfall in Koh Kood with year-round full water.”

Needless to say it was bone dry when we were there; hence I took no photos of it, and instead opted to go for a romantic walk on the beach at low tide with MyTGF, splashing each other in the rock pools, drawing love hearts in the sand, and poking washed up jelly fish with sticks.

The first evening saw us eating dinner (chicken for me, two fresh whole crabs, fish, and prawn soup for her) overlooking the ocean and drinking cocktails as a spectacular electrical storm rolled across from the coast.

The next morning was spent snorkeling on the coral reefs around the Rang Isles, a beautiful collection of small islands about 6kms off Koh Mak. The coral formations are stunning and the fish apparently not phased by seeing overweight german tourists flailing about in the water like drunken whales and shy Thai girls afraid of getting a suntan swimming in knee-length pants, long-sleeve t-shirts and sandals.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing on the beach reading a book, drinking beer and eating – (chicken for me, spicy seafood salad of prawns, calamari, fish and crab for her). The last (3rd day) turned out be anything but a “day” as we were promptly informed at breakfast that the boat to take us back was to leave in 30 minutes. We were off the island by 10am and back on the bus for Bangkok, leaving me to wonder what happened to the third day of the package that I’d paid for. It was probably hiding in the same place as the beef and the year-round water at Khlong-Jao.