Koh Si Chang is a Lotus

Platforms for natural gas exploration dot the Gulf of Thailand along the eastern seaboard. Enormous tankers anchor offshore, making for vistas that resemble Texas more than Thailand. It has become an awkward place to put an island.

But Koh Si Chang makes for a lovely daytrip or overnight, despite the busy industrial harbor it helps shelter. The hour’s ferry ride snakes through freighters flying flags from around the world. On arriving, passengers step onto a pier lined with markets (all those superships have to get their fresh vegetables and beer from somewhere). Up the hill, a Chinese temple looms. There’s not a beach in sight.

I visited on a weekday at the tail end of Chinese New Year. The temple seemed a timely place to begin a tour. Volunteers at the top of the serpent staircase offered me several opportunities to accumulate merit and good luck in the coming year. My small donations also earned me various scrolls and the reading of my name over a loudspeaker.

Having gotten my future sorted out, I settled into appreciating the present. The seaward side of the island was much emptier than the side with the ferry landing. I had the place to myself, aside from a young couple in full wedding gear who were taking pictures with a handsome boardwalk and the beautiful open ocean as a backdrop. I spent nearly an hour prowling the headland.

Such views were apparently what drew a few generations of Thai kings to the island, back in the 1800s when they would sail down the river from Bangkok, and then out into the gulf. Today, their former palace grounds make for nice strolling. They include a hillside stupa where King Rama V liked to meditate. It’s still a good place to contemplate life, for being beach-free also means that the island is jet-ski-free.

In fact, as I ferried back to real life at the end of a long travel day, my attitude was so altered that I took no notice of the floating factories on either side of the boat. Koh Si Chang is like the lotus flower that blossoms out of the mud, rising above defilement and suffering.