I have often wandered what is the charm of islands, what is it that attracts so many tourist to islands all over the world for their vacations, leaving so little islands not ruined by the hands of man.
Because in the end of the day, most tourists go to island resorts where they keep to the beach and the restaurants and by any other means could have been on any other beach anywhere along the seaside.

Then again, I might not be the perfect person to try and understand that phenomenon as I rarely held any office job, and living in Thailand does make islands a part of your daily life. Not that I spend too much time on islands, but they are here, a short ferry ride away, which is comforting.
I think it is the fact islands are isolated. It must be the psychological effect of real escapism, the boss cant find me here, the nagging of that 'real world' is left on the mainland , howling at me as I ship off to my sanctuary asylum.

And they do have that effect, that wormhole anti-matter space where the rules of the 'real world' don’t apply, where freedom is the starting point , not the goal, where the microcosm of a closed environment breeds a new ethical moral codex ad where time is of no value.

Time , as we already know, does not exist. Just a part of our mortal perception and nothing more. When we have fun time flies, when we are in the office it doesn’t move. On an island, thanks to the watery boundaries and the sunny sunny days, time is even more flexible, and because of the sense of comfort and well being islands tend to project time vaporizes into an evolutionary prioritization of wills and whims.

I am not a big beach-sitter, and I find the experience mostly painful. True, that might be the case just because my wife elbows me every time I look at a passing lady in a swimming suit, but the point still stands. And here is where islands come in handy, as usually , if you just look hard enough, you will find that there is so much more to an island than sand , sea and sangria.

On the other hand, you don’t really have to be the touring type. You know what, ok, I fold, if you are already sitting on a lovely tropical island no one can blame you for just kicking back and relaxing for a bit. Later we will go buy some fresh pineapple and papaya from the stall near the kayak rental. Later. Now it's time for nap.

So far I have only been to islands here around Thailand, which, to tell the truth is not that bad, as these are some of the most beautiful  islands in the world. well at least the ones that are in reasonable distance from what we might call civilization and you don’t need a single engine four sitter airplane to parachute you in the resort. And that is indeed the beauty of these islands, the fact they are accessible.

The problem is that accessible means that everyone else can get to them as easily as you, and on public holidays and weekends it is much harder to find a secluded place where you can forget not only civilization but also the whole of humanity, or at least their urban version. Harder , but still possible.

"they" tend to stay in the air-conditioned resorts and fancy restaurants, where they cant disturb us as we explore the lost treasures of the island.
Another big advantage of the islands around Thailand is that although progress is evident and you have any possible western comfort and facilities there, it is still relatively easy to find the traditional Thai island lifestyle, the simple fishermen, the small wooden houses on the water, on that blue border between us an eternity.