Koh Ngai is the sixth island at Andaman Sea that we've been to. I'd rate it at number 4 of my Andaman Sea Island list. Tarutao is still the best of them all.
Feeling quite familiar with highway 404, 4162, Hat Yao pier, we didn't do much preparation to get to Pak Meng. The only maps we had were those of Ko Sukorn and Trang town. It didn't help much, no matter how many times we looked at them. It would have been useful, had we planned to stay at Sukorn. We never expected to spend almost 2 hours driving in Trang town, trying to find that 'familiar' junction to Hat Yao. Am glad we were not in the Amazing Race; else the 'world' would have witnessed how silly the pilot and the co-pilot were (in finding the correct route).
We stopped and asked the locals for direction. Rather I asked for directions while he sat in the car waiting. God knows how much I enjoy asking for directions. (note the bold italic word). Most of them do not speak English and yours truly do not know Thai language. Luck was with us, the fifth person I asked uttered familiar words - straight, left and left one more. We passed the 419-403 junctions and hit highway 4046. We finally saw 2 words that we were desperately looking for in the last couple hours - PAK MENG. Yippie!
We missed the speed boat at noon. Luckily we were just in time to catch the last boat for the day, at 4:30pm. It was a snail-boat (ok, not as slow as the snail). Took us an hour to reach Koh Ngai Resort pier. Kinda expensive - THB450 per person. There is no long tail boat available as Koh Ngai is not a fishermen village like Ko Libong, Sukorn, etc.
(photo of the Boatmen at Pak Meng pier, captured while waiting for the boat to transfer us from the pier to Koh Ngai. No, that was not the boat we took)
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