In May 2013 I had the opportunity to goto Thailand. That is to say, my partner at the time wanted to change his Australian visa so needed to leave the country while it was approved. So, we went to Thailand. I quite enjoyed Bangkok but he hated crowds so we headed south pretty soon after arriving. Rather than go to Phuket or any of the other popular East coast tourist islands we went to Koh Phayam, Ranong, located near the border with Burmah. The island used to be a cashew plantation. There are still cashews all over the place but they are slowly getting over taken by new, smaller rubber tree plantations. The locals are very friendly and while there is a tourist season it doesn't last all year and it's not as commercialized as islands in the east. To get to the island you take a ferry from the mainland. The ferry services a number of local islands, so you end up taking an hour or two cruise through the beautiful waters of Adaman Sea.
Once on the island we stayed on Ao Yai Bay at Bamboo Bungalows and did the usual touristy things of enjoying the beach, enjoying the food on offer and general exploring. As it was past tourist season, many entertainments weren't on offer (i.e scuba diving & fishing tours) so we hung out on the beach and caught some sunlight and appreciated the water and the wildlife.
To put this in perspective, I haven't had a holiday that involves relaxing in my entire adult life. My traveling has usually involved either medieval events, visiting friends or geology related activities. So this was novel to say the least. Having spent far too many years in the PhD research space, I got bored after a couple of hours of relaxing. So I decided to do geology. I noticed the locals were using a conglomerate to line a lot of the paths so I decided to find out where it was coming from.
Construction with conglomerate.
The southern end of our beach appeared to be a highly weathered granite as did the northern end. The clues were also in the sand as they were feldspathic and dark minerals lined the troughs of the ripples closer to the outcrops. At my insistence we visited many a beach until I could find the conglomerate in it's natural state. I didn't manage to find it until our second last day there so it kept me happily occupied for quite some time.
The conglomerate containing well rounded sedimentary pebbles. I'm pretty sure this is post granite but I couldn't find pieces of the granite in the conglomerate.
My Koh Phayam mud map, forgive the roughness, the paper is made of coconut fiber and doesn't lend itself to smooth lines.
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