Ko Lanta

What to do after being on an island?  Another island of course!  45 Minute ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta (if you haven’t figured out by now, “Ko” means island.)  I went with a hotel that Alec’s friends recommended/worked for, and after cross-checking the prices online, confirmed they gave me a good deal. Ko Lanta has many long beaches, and I stayed on one that was central on the island:

 

First night I mostly laid low, got a bite to eat and went to bed, trying to eliminate the cough/cold I’d been battling.  Little did I know, the sickness had just begun…  I woke up the next morning with food poisoning/virus of some sort, which was “shitty” to say the least…  Welcome to Thailand I guess – it had to happen at some point. I’ve never had a flu and cold at the same time though, so that was… an experience.  I ran into the Britain bloke Alec and I met kayaking and he told me the same thing happened to him the day before – must have been something in the fruit shakes.

So, spent an entire day and a half taking naps, drinking water etc. Went for a swim and walked the beach a bit, saw a mushroom bar where they make you psilocybin mushroom shakes, thought great, that’s just what I need in this state – not.  Obviously they must tip the cops to run this kind of establishment.

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The difference in religion from Northern Thailand to Southern Thailand is quite interesting.  In the North, 95% of people are Buddhist, while in the South, maybe 40% of the people are Muslim.  This becomes apparent as you travel South, even just the trip from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta.  An interesting side effect of this is there are an abundance of cats around (as opposed to dogs in the North.)  As with the dogs, you want to stay away from petting them too much, for rabies, fleas and such. Here’s one that was giving me a strange look while it was itching itself:

The next day I had enough energy to rent a scooter and drive around most of the island.  It’s pretty spread out, but there was some stuff to find.  I ran across a couple fields of rubber trees, and finally got a close look at how they harvest it:

 

I then went on to the National Park at the southern tip of the island.  I went on a nature hike that took a bit too much energy than I had, but saw some interesting plants that my mom could probably speak better to/appreciate than I could.  Look to the photos if you’d like to see some plants.

Towards the end of the trail, I got hit by a downpour:

But it soon passed and I walked to the beach:

And up to the lighthouse.  It was a pretty cool place.

I stopped at a couple more beaches, and had some dinner at a restaurant on stilts over a cliff:

 

I left the next day on a van to Krabi.  Got in the van and was the first one to get picked up.  By the second stop (about 2 minutes up the road) I realized I had forgotten my camera in the scooter I rented.  So I asked the driver to turn around, which he was NOT happy with doing, and told me he’d charge me 200 Baht for it.  I came back and the camera wasn’t in the scooter but the receptionist came out and handed it to me.  In the end the driver only charged me 100 Baht, which I was happy to pay to get my camera back. The receptionist, on the other hand, apparently had already considered the camera hers, as I looked on it, and the last picture taken was a smiling picture of herself.  That made me smile/chuckle to myself.

It kind of worked out, because I wanted to get a picture of a Muslim lady, but didn’t have the courage to ask one or know if it’d be offensive if I took one of them. This one I got for free (well, 100 Baht I guess).

The van took me to Krabi Town, which I didn’t know consisted of two “ferries”, which are more like mini barges you drive onto, to get across the small channels of water between the island and the mainland.  It looked like they were in the works of making a bridge, which I imagine would help Ko Lanta immensely.

The pictures can be viewed here