My beach paradise is somewhere most tourists ignore as they pass through

If you’ve been to Koh Tao, chances are you’ve been to Chumphon. Transited through it, in any case. To you, it would have been little more than a bus stop, a train station and the Lomprayah pier, but to me, it’s paradise.

My intention is not to come here, but my overnight train from Bangkok has other ideas. Significant delays mean I’ll miss the ferry from Surat Thani to Koh Phangan and in a moment of madness, I abandon my bunk, jump off the slowly moving train and attempt to reach the islands from another angle.

There are no touts waiting for me at the station. No tuktuk drivers, no taxis, and none of the usual tropes that I’ve come to associate with the tourist trail in Thailand. There is only one dude sitting on a flatbed truck with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He takes one look at me, hikes his thumb behind him, and gives me the Thai equivalent of “get in, loser, we’re going shopping”.

Maybe it’s because he’s driving at about 200km/h, but I feel as though Chumphon might be the most beautiful place on Earth. Blurry, yes, but this only adds to the beauty as the colours bleed between rice paddies, coconut plantations and the karst cliffs. The landscape here is so ludicrously green it makes me feel as though I’ve been living life in black and white.

At the pier, the reason for his haste becomes apparent. He called ahead and delayed the whole ferry just so I could be on it (sorry everyone). I never get to thank him for this as I’m sheepishly bundled aboard before I get the chance.

Between the dude, his truck and the natural beauty of Chumphon, something pheromonic calls my heart back to it. So, while I’m sitting on the deck of the ferry, watching this long, gorgeous stretch of coastline disappear behind the Gulf of Thailand, I ditch my future travel plans for the chance to return.

In doing so, I fall hopelessly in love. There are other parts of Thailand that I have affection for or attraction to, or view with a great deal of respect, but with Chumphon, it’s love, pure and simple.

My romance starts at Villa Varich, a collection of riverside bungalows on the outskirts of town. Chickens are running around, cats are looking at them sideways, and for $35 a night, I get a room that I wouldn’t trade for the penthouse at the Four Seasons. It smells of the coffee they roast on-site and sounds like the calls of geckos and birds of paradise.

They have rusty bikes to borrow, and I put these to good use, following the river as I weave through coconut plantations and the rich tapestry of rural Thai life. The locals here are familiar with tourists in minivans and buses but less accustomed to seeing them roll past on bicycles. Their heads turn, their smiles make my heart sing, and their cries of “Hello!” give me no choice but to cry back.

There are beaches, too. Long, sprawling and unspoiled. To reach these, I trade my pedal-powered wheels for motorised ones, riding a scooter along lethargic roads that take me to a beach that smells of salt, lime and grilled chicken. There isn’t a deckchair, sun umbrella or backpacker with a portable speaker in sight.

I find a cafe on the beach selling fresh coconuts, coffee and coconut coffee, which is a surprisingly delicious combination. Seating in this cafe is limited to swings and hammocks, and when the man behind the bar starts playing his guitar, there isn’t a hint of the usual Koh Phangan douchebaggery about it.

What makes Chumphon so lush also makes it the best place in Thailand to experience southern Thai cuisine, a favourite of mine. Things grow in abundance here and its proximity to the ocean minimises the distance between the farm, the sea and your plate.

I ride to a restaurant (or someone’s house – it’s a blurry line) for a feast of fermented noodles, spicy salads and fiery fish curries that blow my eyebrows right off my happy face. The table is covered in enough herbs to make my wallet weep at Woolworths, and the owner has to intermittently check on me to make sure I’m OK.

The answer, of course, is maybe.

And as I’m sitting here, sweaty, semi-delirious and nursing a delightfully cold beer, I can’t help but feel like I’ve found my happy place. I come back to Thailand time and time again, and yet nothing I’ve seen compares to the beauty I’ve found here in Chumphon, where I’m a guest interloping in Thai life, as opposed to a tourist trapped in an artificial version of it.