Thursday, January 30, 2003

Almost done in Koh Lanta

Ok, let's see, the last update was Monday sometime, so here's what's been happening since.

Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003
Had a crappy sleep last night. I was kinda cool, plus my sun burn hurt whenever I moved. I had sunburns!!

We checked out of Lanta Sand Resort and into Deep Forest Bungalows. 250 baht/night (half the price of Landa Sand Resort). Court and I each paying about $3.50 CDN a night at this place. It's kind of a dive, but not too bad. It's a beach hut type of thing, has a double bed, a small night stand with mirror, and an attached bathroom, with a toilet and shower. No sink. There are ants all over, but none on the bed, so it's good. We have a small lizard living in the bathroom (maybe 5 inches long), which is cool. There are probably more, and we hear strange noises at night, that seem to be coming from the walls of the hut. Courtney said to me this morning that she thinks we have wild animals living in the walls of our hut. All we do is sleep there anyway, no big deal.

We had breakfast in town, and checked out getting scuba lessons (PADI Open Water certification is 10,500 baht, three hundred and some odd dollars CDN). We're gonna wait and see if w can get something in Krabi, maybe cheaper, since this is a tourist resort, it's probably a little more expensive here.

We went to the cave (can't remember the name...something Mai Cave or somethign like that). It's a motorbike ride to the cave, then you have to buy a ticket, and a local guide will take you through the caves. It was just Court and I and the guide, and we each had a flashlight. He was a nice fellow, speaking in his broken English, but I don't think he ever used a toothbrush in his life.

Anyway, the cave was AWESOME!! It was so humid inside, I was sweating and sweating. It was so dark and quiet, and went on and on and on. There were some pretty tight spots, a fat person never would have been able to do it. Along the way, we passed some other spleunkers who were going on a tour as well. The guide then took us to the bat cave. We shone the flashlights up, and there were hundreds and hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling. It was soo cool. We got lots and lots of great caving pictures, unfortunately, we can't upload them in Koh Lanta.

Some other noteworthy items:
In town, there was a group of maybe 10 schoolkids (dressed up in uniforms) that stopped me, and started practising their english on me. They came up and one guy was kind of the more agressive one, and started asking me questions about where I was from, how I liked Thailand, how long I was staying. Every once in a while, another kid would chime in with another questions. They all had English workbooks with them, they had to sometimes open it up and check it before asking a question. It was soooo cute and nice. AFter about 5 minutes of "interrogation", they said goodbye, shook our hands, and said thank you and left us, to find other tourists to practise on, no doubt.

Courtney belches a lot!!!!!!!

Courtney and I did laundry...by hand. We bought some detergent at the local supermarket and used the bucket in our bathroom to do laundry, then hung it outside our cabin to dry. We looked like the trailer park trash of the resort, I'm sure.

In the evening, we went to Jonathon and Carly's cabin, and said goodbye to them. They were leaving the next day to go to Bangkok.

That's about all that happened on Tuesday.

Wednesday, January 30, 2003:
ON Tuesday we booked a 4 Island snorkelling tour to go on on Wednesday. A truck came and picked us up at 8:00AM, we hopped in the back of the pick-up, and took off. When we got to the dock (which is at the townsite), we had some time to kill, so we walked to a shop and bought an underwater camera. Glad we did!!! The four islands we visited were: Koh Ngai, Koh Chuek, Koh Muk, and Koh Kradan.

Anyway, the boat that was to take us there pulled up to the dock, and we boarded the boat. I was expecting a relatively "nice" boat, but this was pretty rickety. Anyway, it got the job done (barely!)

Anyway, it took us about an hour and a half to get to the first island, which was just a huge rock jutting out of the ocean. We jumped overboard, and swam with the fish, it was pretty neat. There weren't tons of fish here, but a lot of very colourful fish and coral. AFter about an hour, we got back on board, and went to the next stop. This was pretty neat. There were a lot more fish here, schools and schools of fish swimming all around you, large and small, yellow, orange, black, striped, spotted, thousand and thousands of them. Very impressive. It was really neat to see someone throw a piece of donut or something into the ocean, and see the fish swarm around it and devour it. Way cool!!

The third stop was called the "Emerald Cave", where we swam through and underwater passage system into the inside of this island, where this beach was surrounded by cheer cliffs on everyside. The only way into the centre of the island is by this underwater cavern. (Or parachute in, I suppose!) The sand in there was unlike any sand I've ever walked on. It was sooo fine, it was like walking in flour, that's how soft and fine it was. Unbelievable.

The fourth island was the lunch stop. The boat pulled up on this beach on another resort island, and we all had kind of a buffet picnic. They had rice, fish heads (I passed on this), vegetables, and a chicken stirfry thing, and bottled water. This was a very nice place.

The wind was blowing pretty heavy today, and there were some pretty big waves crashing into this beach, which was neat.

On the way back, we had to pick up a bunch of people out of a little fishing boat. I think the guy was giving a snorkelling tour from this little fishing vessel, and because of the high seas, the boat couldn't handle them so he had to pull into a small bay, where we pulled alongside, and everybody in that boat climbed aboard our boat. Then we picked up some more people at a big pier on another island.

On the way back to Koh Lanta, the boat nearly keeled over!!! There were huge swells in the sea, and the boat was swaying pretty good. At one point, the boat started keeling over to the starboard side, the windows below decks (where we were sitting) started filling up with water, and we were probably at a 45 degree angle, and the captain knew this was bad, and cut the engines, and turned the boat quick, so we wouldn't keel over. Anyone that was sleeping at that point sure got a rude awakening. Everyone was scared, it was kinda funny. I got a fright too, I'll admit!

We got back to the dock about 6:00 or so, and a truck took us back to our "resort". We had supper at the resort, rented another motorbike, and drove into town, Courtney was craving chocolate, so we found a small bakery on the waterfront, and a brownie and a chocolate shake. Courtney was totally wiped from snorkelling all day. She was to tired. I was doing ok. We went back to the resort, looked at the time, it was only 8:00 (it gets dark about 6:30 here), so we walked along the beach for a while. Did I mention all the bars and lounges along teh beach? Every resort has a bar of some sort, they're never busy, though.

We walked back to our hut, watched some more of our video, then went to bed about 9:30.

Other notes:
Everyone takes their shoes off before entering a store here. So we do too. So you walk around in your bare feet all the time.

I think we're getting used to the weather today. It's still frickin hot during the day, but at night, we sometimes find it kinda cool, even though the temperature probably doesn't get below 25 degrees. We're getting aclimatized (sp?)!

The island has lost power for the last 2 of 3 days. It's out all day, and usually comes back on late afternoon of evening.

No shortage of places selling plane/bus/train/boat tickets out of here. Seems like every 2nd shop in town sells travel!

Oh, and I have to mention the fruit shakes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!! Orange is the best, it's just crushed ice mixed with fruit juice, and is it ever good!!!!! Soo cool and refreshing!!!!

Anyway, that's all I have written in my little diary, so I guess that's it. It's Thursday morning right now, we're taking a relaxing day today (we've been non-stop for almost two weeks straight now). We're gonna buy a ticket out of here, and leave tomorrow for Krabi, and do some day trips from Krabi to the beaches and stuff around there.

Darren: Are you familiar with some sort of "lagoon" or something near Krabi, that's high on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean, or something like that? One guy made mention of it as something to do near Krabi.

Until later. Probably no more updates until we get settled in Krabi tomorrow or the next day.

Bye!

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