Islands & Beaches

The Best Way to Island Hop in Thailand

When you're ready to put down that backpack, grab a cabin on the Star Clipper.
Image may contain Transportation Vehicle Boat Vessel Watercraft and Sailboat
Courtesy of Star Clippers

The jungle-covered jumble of islands off the coast of Thailand—the Butang Archipelago; Ko Rok Nok—are a bear to reach: There are no airports, and I can’t vouch for any of the charters going there. These and other Andaman islands, though seemingly remote, were in centuries past at the crossroads of the Great Game. The British in Burma, the Austrians in the Nicobar Islands, the Dutch in Indonesia. The entire region was a hodgepodge of colonial outposts, sea gypsies, Christian missionaries, tea thieves, and Chinese admirals spreading Islam. These days the islands are mostly unpopulated, a haven for speedboat day-trippers from the mainland.

Nevertheless, the seafaring experience is there for the taking—particularly aboard the Star Clipper, a four-masted barkentine with a crow’s nest, acres of canvas sails, and room for 170 passengers. One morning, while snorkeling off Ko Butang, a school of tiny green fish swirled around me before they suddenly vanished. At Ko Adang, two days later, I encountered multicolored coral, purplish anemones, parrotfish, clownfish, sea cucumbers, and colonies of spiny urchins—all within 30 feet of shore. And we stopped one day at Penang, Malaysia, whose go-go, tech-centric capital, George Town, no longer resembles the charming settlement I visited 25 years earlier. No thanks, I thought. Give me instead a looming, jungle-covered island, Cheshire-cat beaches backed by mangroves, and 220-watt turquoise seas.

As we cruised on, I marveled at the dizzying limestone karsts of Phang Nga Bay, the isolation of the Similans, and the primordial feel of James Bond Island, where Roger Moore once dashed along the sun-bleached sand. My shipmates and I weren’t the first to visit these palm-fringed coves—those day-trippers have been coming here for years—but when the breeze was up and the sails were full, nobody seemed to mind that we were comfortably following in their flip flop tracks, sailing silently onward.