Ko Lanta
February 2004
This is the island of KO Lanta on the Andaman Sea in Southern Thailand. This island was less expensive and less developed than nearby KO Phi Phi which I visited in 2003.
The island has many Tuk Tuk cab drivers who can whisk you around the dusty roads. Beware of the cheats though. One honest guy took me to the dock village area, and on the return trip the new Tuk Tuk driver tried to double the price. I refused him, he smirked, and then he agreed to the going rate.
Above Photo: A restaurant where my dinner companion was a cat that kept coming up to me scrounging for food. There was only ONE guy operating the whole restaurant, and the food took forever, but he served the tastiest dishes. Incredibly good and cheap.
My "chicken" bungalow hut, 200 baht, or $6.00 Canadian per night. Plenty of wildlife here . . . chickens, roosters, mosquitos, and a little gecko lizard who decided to be my roommate. The gecko didn't contribute to the rental fee however. By the way, the night before in Ao Lang, my room was 1000 baht, absolute luxury. You have to have contrast in your life though, don't you. More colourful people too.
My next door neighbor was a guy who had been living in his Bungalow for three months. Every time I opened my door, coming or going, there he was reading a book on his porch. At one point I asked him what he did for a living, and he said he was unemployed. He sure knew how to maximize the joys of unemployment.
I was warned before going to Thailand to avoid live chickens in places like markets because of the Avian flu virus, yet here I was with a fellowship of at least 25 to 30 loitering around my living quarters. I tried to pretend they weren't there, but every morning, there they were. Also, the roosters woke me up every morning while it was still dark, crowing as if they were auditioning to be on the Corn Flakes box. After two nights I had enough and moved up the beach a few miles to a delightful chicken-free area. Good thing I moved too, because I avoided the loud crowd-gathering disaster that happened two nights later. Everyone was talking about a huge fire at the bungalow complex next door on the beach to the ones where I stayed, started by two morons who knocked a candle over in a dispute in their room. This ignited the mosquito netting and spread to several of the bamboo huts, basically shutting the resort down. You don't want that kind of trouble, especially in southern Thailand. I'm sure the unemployed guy sat there calmly reading his book while all the festivities were taking place.
Note the mosquito net. Wards off malaria.
The chicken bungalow did have a bathroom with a western toilet. The yellow bowl is used to flush the toilet.
Avain flu virus? What avian flu virus?
As I said, I couldn't stand the chicken bungalow, so I stayed a few miles down the beach in an excellent place called the Lanta Family Resort, run by an extended Muslim family. Very nice people who rid you of the notion of extreme Islamic fundamentalism. Most of Southern Thailand is Muslim, and they are not interested in scaring the tourists away since their livelihoods rely on tourism. However, a month after I was safely home I read about a motorcycle bomb going off in Southern Thailand province targeting tourists from Malaysia.
This is the Lanta family resort.
My first night here I stayed at the above hut. Only 500 baht ($15.00 Cdn). It was the only room they had available that first night.
Below is the view from the window.
Then I stayed in a 200 baht hut, seen below, much, much nicer than the chicken bungalow.
Photos above and below, the "Chocolate Bar" right on the beach at the Lanta Family resort.
At the Lanta Family resort, right off the beach was a bar called the Chocolate Bar. My first night at the Lanta family resort, I noticed this hippyish looking guy loitering around it before it opened. It turned out he had never worked there in his life, but he had met the owner the night before on another island. The owner asked him if he could man the bar for a night, so he agreed. How casual.
Anyway this guy was hilarious. His name was Brandon, and he was a backpacker from Kansas City. He had never mixed a drink in his life, and as the evening progressed he was being asked to serve up exotic drinks. At one point he told a patron to step behind the bar and mix up the drink that the patron had ordered. A newlywed couple sat down and the lady asked for a Jack Daniels and Coke. Brandon poured about 3/4 of it straight whisky and then dashed a bit of ice and Coke into the glass. The newlywed man looked at me and said, "Well this bar won't be making any money tonight". Hilarious.
Above, Brandon the rookie bartender and the way he mixed drinks.
Ah, the ongoing adventures of the orange shirt.
Every day the hardworking family would stop for about two hours and do fun family activities. They would bat a badminton birdy back and forth without any net in the grassy area shown above. The older guys would teach the little guys how to Mai Tai box. And on the beach others would play volleyball, which was really fun because they let me play with them. I really liked these people.
After several days without yet paying for my room or my food, I checked out. The bill? $1800 baht for food and lodging. So inexpensive it hurts. Much cheaper than my stay on KO Phi Phi last year, which is way more developed.
Thank you for you.
On to Some Scuba Diving Photos