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Published: February 6th 2006
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(Swena) The Seahawks lost. I got four hours of sleep. I haven't had breakfast or a shower. Love you all. Will write more when my brain can function better. I leave you in the capible hands of Kev and Dust. Later
(Kev)
Ko Lanta may be favorite beach city yet. I loved Langkawi, and I liked the hostel and coastline better in Ko Pha Ngan…but over all Ko Lanta just had it going on. We had a bit of an adventure in getting here; we crammed ourselves into the local bus (basically just a truck) then boarded two ten-minute ferries, and then basically hitch hiked our way to our destination. We were fortunate because we didn’t even have to stick out our thumbs and within five minutes we were offered a ride. When we got to the beach we begin the long process of finding a good place at the right price. We compared the prices for close to an hour, and then out of no where a torrential rain came down. This rain pored…it reminded me of the Costa Rica down pours a bunch of us experienced on the mission trip. The rain only lasted for about 20 minutes
and then we resumed our search for the perfect hostel. As it turned out the next place we checked, was the place we chose,it wasn’t exactly perfect…but the price was right (only 2 dollars per person). The other places we checked were charging 600 Baht (about 5 dollars per person) and who would pay that...
I loved Ko Lanta because we made our own fun here. We entertained ourselves for about an hour messing around with a lighter and a little hand sanitizer (safely of course, only tile floor involved).Fire is so much fun...lets just say the bathroom floor was adequately germ free when we were done. I also had a lot of fun shooting the crazy night shots. It was late at night and we decided to go for a walk, we found this embankment in the sand, and a little while later we had the pictures you are looking at now. It was so dark i couldn't tell what move Matt or Dust had done untill i checked my camera after the sand had settled. I espechially was amazed at Dustin's mid air float...how did he do that?
Ko Lanta also gave me the most amazing
sunset i have ever seen. There was thick rain clouds all around, and the whole horizon was a deep red. Thunder and lightening added to the ambiance...but words are cheap and saddly i did not have my camera...so I just watched as i chowed down on some oreo cookies.
Lets see…we paid for some fun too. The caves were awesome, the mopeds are always fun (so long as you don’t crash), and eating out provides its own entertainment. One night we decided to hunt down a buffet that supposedly only happened every Saturday night. It was about a 3 or 4 mile walk away but we thought we should give it a try even though we didn’t know what was on the menu. We walked and we walked only to fnd it wasn’t even for real, but along the way we found some cheap and delicious ice cream (it appears as if I have the stomach for it once again).
As Swena mentioned we got up this morning to watch the game, which I think we should have won by the way (I hate it when refs influence the game like that so much). We got up at
five but I don’t feel to tired. Today will be read a book day, I want to stay out of the sun a little because I got slightly burned yesterday. I am really looking forward to tonight, last night we actually found a buffet, and it was all I hoped for…it even had mashed potatoes (they still weren’t as good as yours though mom). Picture me with the biggest smile you remember…and that’s me right now just thinking about it. My only worry was that I would pull a Puerto Rico…Kris and Ben you know what I am talking about.
Well I think I have been long winded enough for today. I hope you guys have a good Monday. To my friends in Walla Walla, I do think about you guys, I like it when random memories comes to my head…there is so many of you guys …when they come it makes me smile. Anyway I hope school is going ok, I love getting emails, and we all enjoy reading the comments you make to our travelblog.
Talk to you later
~love Kev
(Dust)
Kev was very right to say that Koh Lanta was a
cool place. It really was perfect for us. It has been a little bit of a goal for us to relax and have some fun on the beaches here in southern Thailand because soon it will be inland and Jungle for us. On the 8th its off to the Malaysian side of Borneo (if your ever heading that direction, good deals with AirAsia). Basically instead of having a main road, they had a beach that everything was on. They did have a larger town but it was north of the beach we were interested in. Lanta Long Beach was what everyone seemed to call it even though on the maps it was another Thai name.
We were also amazed at how cheap it was to get to Koh Lanta for all 3 of us. Travel agencies we're quoting something like 300 Baht per person, which isn't a ridiculous amount coming from the cities that we're all used to but all 3 of us got to Koh Lanta for 189 Baht total which we found amazing. The way back was almost as impressive considering the fact that it was only about 300 for all of us to get back to
Truckin
Our free ride from the first ferry to the beach. we decided to just walk a ways before getting a taxi and this bungalow operator picked us up and took us with no pressure to stay at his place. Ao Nang. Again on the way back there was a free ride after a couple km of legwork, but they were so nice to us and took us so far without trying to give us ridiculous price quotes that we paid them anyway. So the moral of that story again is that patience is your best friend. It is so much easier to feel good about paying and being generous when you know that kindness is the motive behind an action. Also as kevin said, the sunset on the first night was amazing....clouds with lightning stretching across the horizon, almost a once in a lifetime thing.
We've had some interesting things happen, like more electrocution by touching a computer monitor (not badly of course) and having strips of rubber right off trees to snap each other with. There has been lots of walking but few regrets. People have been willing to give (so far) good advice about almost anything you can think of, and some stories we laughed about and others we wished we'd never heard.
The caves were neat and despite the pictures of all those spiders, there weren't really many in the caves. In fact those
Pounding the beach
Our trek to find the right place at the right price, I'm sure life could be tougher I think were the only ones that we actually saw to take pictures of. The bats were pretty cool, I don't think it was all that nice of us to wake them up. After all I'm not much of a morning person myself, but they were very interesting.
I've been meaning to get some diving in, this whole area of coastline has amazing diving (or so I'm told, regretably not first hand info yet). Time is just not on my side right now I guess, but we'll see what happens after our Borneo adventure. One of the guys we've been talking to saw the shadow of a whale shark yesterday so that consoles me a little knowing that I only missed the shadow. Anyway, we're looking forward to lots of new things that might actually not even include beaches (but just in case your wondering ahem...dad....no we are not tired of them yet).
Take it easy,
Dustin
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Mom Cindy
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YOu guys have totally out done yourselves. I have not laughed from just looking at pictures ever!!!! How in the world di you get all those amazing and yes VERY funny night shots. All I can say is what a great thing to find after the Seahawk game!!!!! It definatly was my favorite blog yet. It almost was enough to go get Pops(Ron) out of bed so he could have a good side splitting laugh too. But alas, WE both look so forward to the surprise of a new blog, that we promised each other not to ruin the surprise by telling each other. Its fun to check our own e-mails....guess you can see how exciting our lives are Haha! Thanks sooooo much. I loved the caves and all. YOu guys are looking good too. Trying to make those femaile hearts jump back at school huh? :) Blessings to ya and wow, that was quite a shot of the masquito net. Do you sleep in one of those most nights? Bye for now.