Cooling off in Ko Lanta {Cath}

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It was madness getting off the boat from Railay. Schools of touts flustered about all the tourists, encouraging all to come to their bungalows. At one point, we had about 7 expectant faces all talking over each other at us. It was pretty crazy, not to mention overwhelming! We selected one who said that he's take us to his and if we didn't like it, he'd take us where we wanted to go. As it turned out, he only had one bungalow left, right at the end of a row leading away from the beach, so we decided to look for some place else.

Our search for a better bungalow led us along a very extensive beach, aptly named 'Long Beach', however it really was as beautiful as it was long. After a while the bungalow area grew sparser and sparser then eventually was replaced all together by a pine forest. The beach too started changing a bit, from a perfectly soft white beach with a clear sea to a slightly courser sand and a few rocks poking out from under the waves. Even after about 5km of walking we still weren't sure that we wanted to give in and take a tuk tuk (side car attached to a motorbike) to the bungalow we had in mind. The drizzle changed our minds, and we quickly hopped under the safe-ish canope of a tuk tuk and headed off to the bungalow.

The drizzle continued on into the evening, but in a way it was a good thing. After rushing around through Singapore and Malaysia for the past week, it was really great to be forced to take it slow for a while. Fortunately our bungalow resort had a beautiful restaurant with pillows and low tables overlooking the beach and rock pools. Not a bad spot for a cup of hot chocolate and a book! 😊

We did have one great day when the weather cleared up and we went for another long walk along the beach, enjoying the sunshine on our backs and playing 'can the fishies survive this pebble avalanche?' in the rock pools. Not a bad way to end off possibly the last Asian beach we'll be on in the foreseeable future. 😊

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