Koh Lanta

After a speedboat, night bus, bloke with a car, police car and two mini buses I made the trip from the Perhentian Islands to Koh Lanta. It took 27 hours, although a good chunk of that was waiting for the night bus.

I met up with Mihai and an Italian bloke he met called Stefano. He'd been living in Australia and was making his way back to Italy to surprise his mum. Stefano is probably the most laid back bloke I've met, while Mihai is easily the most highly strung. They balanced each other out nicely.

The first day I was here I mainly caught up on sleep. The highlight of the day was watching a Russian girl rent a scooter, ride it four metres and crash it into some rocks right in front of the bloke she just rented it from, then state that it isn't like driving a car.

The next day I went to the beach and I have to say it is kinda disappointing. The beach is probably a few km long and bars and restaurants line all of it. The water is nice but I really don't like having all this shit on the beach. I used to drive to Redhead in Newcastle because the Newcastle beaches don't feel like beaches with concrete instead of dunes.

The next day I went with Mihai. In standard fashion, he had befriended the owner (Trey) and made grand plans to transform this jungle block the owner has into an adventure park, where the main attraction was to catch and ride a buffalo. You can't make this stuff up.

They took me for a spin out to see this block and I've gotta say, it's pretty nice, but it used to be rice paddies so it's prone to flooding. As we walked around, Trey picked dozens of different plants to use in his restaurant and I ate quite a few of the leaves and could recognise the flavours. I suggested he open a little cooking school with accomodation as everything he needs is already growing there. His heart is set on a buffalo riding adventure Park though.

Last night I went night swimming. A guy was walking the beach selling lanterns. I was saying how hard a job that was so Mihai, always unable to let things rest, decided to explain to the guy how to improve his business by having an already lit lantern to demonstrate. The guy didn't speak English well, but if he did I'm sure he'd point out that if he lights a lantern it will burn all the fuel and be a waste of stock. Regardless, the guy walked back past 5 minutes later and told us to look, because he'd just sold 10 lanterns. In fact he'd actually sold about 25 of them, which made him 5000 baht, or 200 dollars. So I guess he doesn't have a bad job after all! The people he sold them too lit them and we watched them float away. They never cease to amaze.

Today I intended on leaving this place for Koh Samui but I hadn't done my research. Koh Samui is 10 hours away and the bus had already left. Instead, I'm going to go to this remote place on the outskirts of Krabi. It looks nice and relaxed. I'm not really enjoying the manufactured experiences I'm getting so I'm thinking of skipping out on southern Thailand all together after that. It isn't even that cheap and quite frankly I'm a beach snob.