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Published: January 29th 2020
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2 days in Krabi Town staying at JP Mansions, a budget place with spotless rooms and a backpacker vibe. The staff were just great and the location was excellent. Recommended. I had an aircon room with bathroom, cost was 480B a night. You can do cheaper with a fan and no window. Had a buddy with me so we hired a scooter and did a big loop into Ao Nang and back, then went to find the food night market next to the pier to eat in the evening. As we got there the back tyre was feeling squishy and we had a puncture, so I got off and my buddy slowly rode it back. The scooter hire is in the Green House Hotel, opposite JP, 300B a day. After a discussion they took it off to be mended as all other bikes were kaput and I ate disappointing things on sticks in the night market. The food looked very good there and there are plenty of tables to sit at, I just made a bad choice and it took ages to grill the corn. Then waited for coconut rice pancakes, the little round things cooked in an iron pan with
circular compartments. Delicious and 20B for 6, bargainous!
For breakfast I went next door, to a place called Happy Home, run by a lady called Jinnie. Her English is very good and she loves to chat. The day before she gave us some oranges, and at breakfast a huge papaya from her farm, the size of a rugby ball. She’d taken us to one of her family businesses, a petrol station on the main road, for drinks in the cafe there. She was really interesting to talk to and my exact age. He father came from China and started the business. They seem to have fingers in many pies now. Well travelled and very kind. I enjoyed meeting her.
The next day we drove in buddy’s car to Ko Lanta. JP himself gave us duff info, saying that first we crossed the bridge and then the ferry, to get across to Lanta Yai. So we weren’t concentrating and wondered why we had ground to halt in a long queue for a bridge. I was in a van last year, also not concentrating. As we went round the corner after waiting about 20 minutes we saw the front of
the queue and a guy taking white tickets. What tickets???? We tried to pay him and he flapped his hand for us to turn around and go back to the ticket place we hadn’t seen. No way were we doing that queue again. We turned round and parked behind the tuktuks, and I set off to go back and buy one. Asked at the first little shop and an older lady gestured to her clapped out scooter, I got on and she gave me a lift back up the hill. It would have been quite a walk. Don’t know how we missed the ticket place. It’s huuuuuge, you turn off the road to the left and there is a ginormous hut. I said car, 2 people, although they looked a bit confused, where was the car? 120B, white ticket and the lady had waited for me. I gave her 40B when she delivered me back to the queue and the car, she was very happy. We turned round and rejoined the queue and got on the next ferry. 20 slow minutes across, then over the bridge at the end of Lanta Noi and arrived at Best House, my happy place.
It’s not full like it was last year. A warm welcome from Bao and her husband. A few of the wooden bars have disappeared or fallen down but everything else is the same.
Bao got us a bike and we set off to go right down to the National Park at the bottom, where I haven’t been before due to lack of suitable transport. This time also the transport was not suitable. The back tyre felt dodgy on the stony track up to the main road and after a couple of kms deflated completely. We stopped outside a travel agent and called Best House. The kind man talked on the phone to explain exactly where we were and they arrived on a pickup after about 15 minutes with a new and much better bike on the back. There’s a new road at Khlong Nin and we followed it, missing the small right hand turn to carry on along the west coast. We ended up going through some horrible roadworks and then in Lanta Old Town. No worries, we’d have gone today anyway. Drove to the end of the pier and had delicious coconut ice cream from a tuktuk vendor
lady. Back through the terrible roadworks, up the steep hill and hairpin bend and back down to the west coast road. We saw where we’d gone wrong, the right angled turn to the right which keeps you on the coast road. It’s about halfway down the island. Very easy to miss.
Ate at Mr Wee’s Pizza place (not pizza, although that looked better than the Thai offerings). Breakfast was at Aleena’s Minimarket on the corner. It didn’t disappoint. Fab food as I remembered from last year, lots of vegan offerings if that’s your thing. No sea view but the choice more than makes up for it, and you can get sandwiches, shakes etc to take to the beach for lunch. I had porridge with banana and coconut. There are about 4 different milks to choose from. It seems way ahead of its time here. Today we went back to the ferry on the scooter to check out the return route To the mainland, as my buddy will be sans navigator then. There was a queue, nothing like the one coming over, and the ticket office is where it should be, in the centre of the road just before you
get on it. Then back to Saladan for a coffee in one of the stilt restaurants over the sea and a loop around the east coast road to try to find the mangrove place. The road is very quiet and in much better condition, although it did say roadworks and they are obviously going to be putting in a pipe work system at some point. You can see monkeys in a lot of places on the route, pawing through rubbish bins and carefully crossing the road. Saw the mangrove place but didn’t stop.
I was glad to see there are still a few sun beds outside the massage place and minimarket on the beach near Best House, plenty of availability at 9am and none after lunch. You can get in the shade of a big tree outside Somewhere Restaurant. The sea was choppy but like a warm bath. I checked out a sign in the guest house opposite, a taxi to Lanta Old Town is 350B, which Bao said is a good price. Not that you have much choice as there’s a distinct lack of public transport.
Enough exploring for today.
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