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Published: November 29th 2006
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Monday 20 November
Our boat to take us to Ko Lanta was leaving the port at 11.30am. Stu woke up slightly worse for wear but we managed to drag our tired, hungover bods to the port in time. As we went to board a ticket clerk took our slip off us even though we needed it to get over to Krabi. He advised us that we could not have it back as it was unusable now. Apparently we could only do one trip out to either Ko Lanta or Krabi - not both. Kerry lost her rag at him and taking out the swear words didn’t have much to say. Its so easy to get skanked around here, you just don’t expect tour reps to do it from their cosy little office.
We boarded and 1hour and 30 min later arrived in Ko Lanta. We grabbed a tuk tuk to take us to the hotel, which by the way was lovely if a little bit too far away from any of the shops. The tuk tuk in Ko Lanta is more of a moped and side-car outfit - certainly nothing that either Kerry or Stu had experienced before! Our first afternoon was spent by the pool chilling before going to the restaurant next door for a meal and to watch sunset. We chose to have our meal on the beach - that was until it started raining. We moved underneath a wooden canopy which was a circular dome raised off the floor slightly so you have t hoist yourself up to get on the platform where they had cushions and a table to eat from. We had just finished our meal and it was quite dark by this point so we ordered a glass of wine to help us chill out a bit. The next thing we knew it was raining so heavy that the sand beneath our canopy had flooded. It started thundering and lightning like we had never seen before but we were in our element just sitting there watching it all going on. A waiter tried to rescue us with an umbrella but we just took it off him and told him we wanted to stay. The bar next door had massive problems with their canopy roof which kept flooding but the manager took it all in his stride. He even dug a moat around his bar to stop the floods coming in. We sat and watched the storms for a couple of hours before heading back.
Tuesday 21 November
We decided to get a ped out today to explore the island. So we hired one out from across the road. Ko Lanta is a very small island and so we only needed the bike for 1 day to cover the entire island. The island is beautiful but not as well equipped for tourists as Phuket. The roads have many pot holes in and most of them you don’t see until its impossible to do anything about. Unfortunately for us we hit a really big one which bounced the rucksack out of the front basket and onto Stu’s knee and also pinged Kerry out of her seat and a foot into the air. Thankfully Kerry landed back on her seat but she hurt her back slightly and gave herself a huge headache. There was not quite as much to see here as any where else we had been but it was a nice peaceful retreat.
That was of course until we headed out that night to the same restaurant next door as the night before. We thought we would have a nice meal (which is about a quid each) and watch another storm (storms occur everyday and night on this island so we had our free entertainment for the evening). We finished our meals and decided to go and sit in the bar area- just for one!! The bar is run by an Ozzie bloke called Todd and his bar was always full and looked like fun. Todd was very welcoming and sat us at the bar with a cocktail menu. We got chatting to Todd who introduced us to Stokesy (another Ozzie bar tender), Nui (a Thai bar tender), a Geordie called Bill (his nickname was Big Bar Bill) as he drank that much there and a chap called Mick who was a Swedish 40 something. Todd also mentioned that his mate owned a yacht and asked if we wanted to do a snorkeling trip as he would sort us it for a discount price. There were another 3 Dutch girls at the bar who were also interested so it seemed like a good idea. The drinks were flowing all night (even though we had only taken enough money out for one drink each) Todd gave us a tab! It was Kerry’s turn to get steaming and she did it well! She managed to talk every poor soul at the bar to death! (bless!). We left about 1am as the bar closed down so we staggered off to bed with a big tab to pay the next day.
The next couple of days of Ko Lanta were pretty much the same although due to our huge bar bill (okay it was about 13 quid) we had to tell Todd we couldn’t afford the boat trip now as we were obviously on a budget. He was cool and invited us to an Irish Bar opening that night. We met loads of funny people of all nationalities at the bar but we were both a little fragile (and skint) from the night before so we didn’t stay too late. Its amazing how tiring doing nothing can be!! KRABI NEXT STOP!
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