Bye Bye Banana Beach


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Asia » Thailand » South-West Thailand » Ko Lanta
April 30th 2016
Published: May 1st 2016
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Banana Beach Resort Banana Beach Resort Banana Beach Resort

Lit up at nightime
So we didn't end up finding those fights. As the season changes, the tourist money dries up, restaurants and inns close, and the local Muay Thai stadiums shut down. Instead we walked along the beach at night and found a bar with a fire-dancing amateur hour. We sat and drank cocktails by the ocean watching drunk foreigners scorch themselves with spinning balls of fire. A delightful end to our night.



Since we last wrote, Seth and I have been going around and more fully exploring the island. There are several beaches here, each more beautiful than the last. Our first week here we stayed at Banana Beach Resort on Klong Dao beach, where the resorts cater to Swedish / northern European families instead of backpackers and beach bums like us. The next beach over is Long Beach or Phra Ae. Its name holds true as the longest beach on the island, and it's the perfect beach to spend a morning walking down under the shade of the umbrella trees. Supposedly the snorkeling is excellent, but so far we've only really dipped our toes in the ocean. Our $10 snorkel kits more or less fell apart on their trial run, and we need to sit down with superglue to patch the leaks and make them shipshape. But the water is warm, the beach is alive with tiny translucent crabs (and jellyfish! eek!), and the coconuts cost 65ยข. Now we have relocated to Khlong Nin beach, which is less touristy and more residential. There is a mosque next door and we are awoken each morning by the call to prayer at 5 AM and the national anthem at 8. There is far less traffic and one in five of the endless beach resorts have shuttered their windows and closed their doors for the season. We can tell the island would be completely different in December, but we (and our wallets) are happy to have the beaches to ourselves. And with everything 33% off, we can't complain! For example, we just rented a motorbike that would cost 600 baht per day during the high season for 200 a day. Seth's haggling skills continue to come in handy. Pretty much every price can be renegotiated, and it's hard to find a reason to spend the hottest part of the days anywhere besides an air conditioned massage parlor.

Seth has begun to study Muay Thai at the local gym, Lanta Muay Thai (switching writers to Seth). It is owned by the local fight baron, who owns all three of the island stadiums as well as a series of gym housing complexes that now sit vacant for the low season. Training happens twice a day, and the gym is populated by old gnarly Thais and a few young fighters preparing for stadium fights. I seemed to hit it off with the trainers, who saw my pasty skin and flabby stomach and probably wrote me off as just another farang. But then they punched, kneed, and elbowed me in the head for 90 minutes and now they like me! I have been invited to climb into a minivan with 7 other people from the gym and go up to Surat Thani, a northern province, on the 7th to watch Anjai fight and represent Lanta Muay Thai. Anjai has probably been fighting since the age of six and looks like he has twice as many bones and muscle groups as anyone in the US. His energy is giddy and playful, and his cardio is terrifying. I watched for forty five minutes as he unleashed somewhere around a thousand full power knees on the bag, and then the trainers all took turns clinching with him in the ring and never giving him a chance to recover before they threw the next old pro his way. The oldest guy at the gym is somewhere between seventy and two hundred years old, an whip-strong Muslim named Suleiman who smokes gigantic joints and laughingly said that he wanted to hurt me. Which is good, I think? One way to find out, and that's to go back! I'm very excited. This has been a lifelong dream of mine, and it feels amazing to finally be here.

Unfortunately, I've come down with a nasty head cold and can't really breathe or hear anything. My neck glands are swollen to three times their normal size, but I figure being thrown around by the neck is basically sports massage, so I'll be going back in as soon as possible. The gym seems deserted besides Anjai, the old guys, and me, so there should be a lot of opportunities for one on one instruction. The Lanta gym has a reputation for extremely technical Muay Thai, and it's a great place to get back into the flow of things after a six year hiatus from the sport.



Yesterday we visited the Lanta Orchid Farm and Butterfly Garden ( http://www.lanta-orchidnursery.com/history_eng.htm ), which is located next door to an elephant sanctuary in the island's mountain region. There were thousands of carefully labeled epiphytic and lithophytic orchids growing on hanging substrates of wood and moss. They ranged in size from bigger than a grapefruit to smaller than a pencil eraser, and we were given magnifying glasses by the old lady who runs the Farm to examine the petals in magnificent detail. Kirsten and Kalyn would have been in heaven. Next we were led into a netted enclosure that was perhaps half the size of a soccer field, where hundreds of butterflies drooped from every branch and sunned themselves in the afternoon warmth. Haphazard signs warned us, "Do not touch the caterpillars! Very Poisonous!" and "The plants are venom!". Trays of rotting bananas and watermelon attracted clouds of butterflies, so it was easy to examine them in detail as the butterflies drank themselves into a stupor on fermented fruit.



Today we plan to relax on the beach, painting and writing. Perhaps we will got for a swim? Who knows where the day will take us.


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3rd May 2016

This continues to be awesome.
Thanks for writing out these posts & keeping us updated! Seth, hope you're not getting too beat up!

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