Thailand’s Hidden Lagoon: My Free Mud Spa (2015)

At about nine in the morning we found out there is a lagoon hidden in the hills of the island. TripAdvisor said the trek is daring and even dangerous: a climb up to a viewpoint, then three steep cliff descents, where many tourists give up. I took the rope up, climbed down all three, and honestly, I was expecting worse.

At the bottom, the lagoon turned out to be a mud pit, because the tide was out. We waded across knee-deep in what felt like a zombie walk, to a cave that made me think of a Lara Croft game, then waited for the tide to come back.

In Montreal people pay a fortune for mud spas, and here it was free, so I did a photoshoot in the mud, my first ever. It sent the dozen or so tourists packing, and when the tide finally rose, we had the lagoon to ourselves. Then came the climb back up: what goes down must come up!