Ko Bulon Le: The Secret Island

Published by

Alex

on

26th Nov 2023

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
Terry Pratchett

We booked Ko Bulon on a whim. It was our second day on Koh Lipe and we were looking to get back to the slower pace we had grown used to in Indonesia. In retrospect, it was the perfect time to take a breather before a hectic few days in Bangkok followed by a busy week in Chiang Mai for the Loy Krathong festival.

Bulon is an island of fishermen. The village (there is only one) is sprinkled through the forest across the northern bays of the island and is just about invisible on Google maps. The main path is paved well enough for a handful of scooters and a lone tractor to higgledy-piggledy their way around the island, but most people just walk: the island is only a kilometre across and it doesn’t take long to get anywhere.

A mile of white sandy beach wraps around the east and south of the island and is bookended by the island’s two main resorts, Pansand in the south and ours, Bulone Resort, in the north-east. Between them are the school, a restaurant on the beach, a hut on stilts with the sign, “Bulon Police”, and a small bungalow with a trolley bed outside which we took to be the hospital.

There are so few visitors here that the tourism infrastructure only operates for peak season: the resorts only open in November and when we were there a couple of weeks later, the island was still waiting for its first ice creams to arrive. (This became Finn’s daily ritual: “Can we check again?”)

To the east, rocky islands rise up from the sea like the jagged fingertips of some forgotten god, sunken and long turned to stone. The tail end of the wet season is still shaking itself out and every day purple thunderclouds would gather on the mainland and unleash their fury. We would watch these spectacular storms from our beach under blue skies, as the thunderheads swallowed up the islands and tracked our way. When the storm hit, it would shake us and soak us and leave us, as fast as it came, evaporating like a dream.

Such was life on Ko Bulon Le. If it wasn’t raining it was about to, but the sun burned brightly and in between showers we spent a lot of time in the water. Finn’s snorkelling came into its own on Bulon: not only does he no longer need the lifejacket or any help with his mask, but as he swims along he is now singing into his snorkel, not just breathing.

Bulone Resort

Bulone Resort and its beach face north-east towards the Thai mainland. The house beach is the best on Bulon Le: it has soft white sand and the best reef and conditions for snorkelling on the island.

When we weren’t on the sand or in the water, we were on the deck of our hut or at a shady table on the beach, watching Finn build sandcastles while we researched the next leg of our trip.

Power to the hut only runs overnight from 6pm to 7am, but we spent so little time inside that we didn’t really notice.

Here’s another of the resort’s residents, a large monitor lizard:

The island

Ko Bulon Le is a small island, easy to walk around in a day. Having said that, the extent of our walking was often just beachcombing.

We spent a day criss-crossing the island, exploring tracks in the jungle and hidden bays.

Friends

Finn continued his run of good luck making friends on desert islands.

On our first day, a Hungarian / Malaysian family arrived; Finn had a wonderful time exploring the beach and shepherding hermit crabs with their two daughters. There were few guests so we more or less commandeered the restaurant and enjoyed a string of festive family dinners together.

Finn was inconsolable when they left. He is starting to struggle with the constant goodbyes you get with long term travel.

The next day, a German family we had met on Koh Lipe arrived. What luck! Finn and their son Ferdi were permanent fixtures on the beach for the rest of our week. This was a good lesson for Finn: that goodbyes are temporary and the friends we make, we will meet again.

Leaving

When we arrived, the speedboat ferry dropped us directly on the sandy beach out front of Bulone Resort. Easy. Leaving was different: we needed first a tractor ride and then a longtail boat taxi before meeting the ferry for the transfer out at sea.

The tide, reef, wind and swell were such that the ferry couldn’t make it safely to our beach to pick us up. The reef was exposed in the low tide, the rain was coming down in sheets and the waves were picking up longtail boats like toys. Not to worry, the lady at Bulone Resort said, the ferry will meet you on the protected side of the island, at a spot called Panka Bay. This was a surprise: we had been hiking around the island a couple of days before and we knew we had no chance of backpacking it over in time to catch the boat.

Not to worry, the lady said. Next thing, the local farmer arrived at to the resort on his tractor, we bundled our bags and ourselves into his trailor and off we went.

We arrived at Panka Bay only to find that the ferry couldn’t make it here, either. It would wait for us across the island at Mango Bay, instead. Not to worry, one of the local longtail boat taxis was on hand to deliver us there.

We were about three quarters of the way to Mango Bay when we turned a corner and caught the full brunt of the wind and the waves: the skipper wasn’t going any further. We turned back and dropped anchor in a sheltered bay.

The chatter between the skipper, his mate, and one or more people on the phone was in Thai so I could be wrong, but it did not have a “not to worry” kind of vibe to it.

But not to worry!

Before long they settled on a plan, the ferry came over to meet us out in open water, we hopped across with our bags, smiled sheepishly at all of the other passengers who were now late for their awaiting transfers on the mainland, and settled into our seats for a bumpy ride back to shore.