"An Around-the-World-Ticket for Two, Please."

Koh Lanta

Posted by Sarah O'Neill , Tuesday, 5 October 2010 06:00

Have now been on Koh Lanta since Sunday, and am just getting round to blogging! In case you are wondering, Koh means island! We have a nice little bungalow, with a terrace balcony with a view of the beach and sea, air con, a hot shower, flushing toilet and a nice infinity swimming pool! Getting here was, shall we say, interesting!

We left our hotel at 8pm on Saturday, and were taken to the pier on the back of a truck. The night boat was quite empty as we were early. It was evident that if it filled up it was going to be a tight squeeze! There were just rows and rows of mattresses with small pillows, and numbers painted on the wall above, very close together! If you can make out the mattresses in the photo, it was three to a mattress!!!! It began to fill up more and more, and by nine o’clock, it seemed pretty much at capacity! We both had blokes either side of us, and if you lay on your back, you didn’t even have enough room to put your arms by your side! The man who laid down next to me was like a human radiator, he was emitting heat and I was soooo hot! We both took four of the magic sleeping pills and slept, all be it broken sleep, all the way. At one point I got up for the toilet, and it was such a funny scene, rows and rows of people laying side by side!

The boat docked at 5am, and we had to wait for a truck type vehicle, and they squeezed 11 people plus baggage on it! Short trip to a café, where we then waited for another truck type thing to take us to the bus. We were on the bus a couple of hours, which arrived in the middle of nowhere at a shack, which turned out to be a little rendezvous point for everyone going in their different directions. We then waited for a minibus which took us to Koh Lanta via two ferries!

We got to the hotel, which is very nice, if a little run down and old, but has everything we need and a few luxuries we haven’t had for a while! Soon after we arrived we got to Skype with Ben’s Mum and Dad which was great! Then we asked about what was nearby, and how far it was to walk to the town etc. Unfortunately we seem to be a bit far out, and so the only option was to hire a scooter! Ben and I were both apprehensive about this, and were never intending to hire one at all, but it is the only option here, so had to! We got given a red helmet and a silver helmet, a quick guide on how to use it, and that was it! No need to show driving licence or anything! Ben got to grips with it for a minute in the gravel car park, and then I got on, and off we went! Ben did really well, and was cautious and sensible, and thankfully we survived! We had a little explore and found that a lot of places were shut! It is certainly the end of the low season here, some things are beginning to open, but a lot of it is still closed. We think we came at the wrong time! We walked along our beach later, which the book described as having loads of little beach bars and a really nice atmosphere, but as we walked along, we saw they were all boarded up and hardly anything was open! Decided to go back to the town for tea, and tried to find ‘the Brit café’ who were showing the football, we drove for ages and thought we must have missed it, so turned back, but got all the way back to nearly the beginning, where we had to turn onto the long dark dirt track towards out hotel, when we came to a standstill and realised we had run out of petrol! Thankfully a nice man came to help us, and he was actually selling bottles of petrol on the side of the road, amazing! After he put a couple in our tank, we set off again and went to a real petrol station and filled up completely! We were so fortunate we didn’t break down on the dirt road to the hotel in the dark! Red top and Silver Bullet set off again! We found the café in time for half time of the footy and had some great grub! Headed back to the hotel and had such a good night’s sleep!!!

Had a nice lie in, and then I went and broke the tap in the bathroom! It had obviously been botched fixed over the years and the top just came clean off! They sent some guys to fix it, and as it was raining we sat and read. After they’d left had a shower, and water started spurting out of the pipe, so I had to run to reception and get them to fix it all! In the end we had to move rooms to next door!

We went to the town for lunch, and then checked out a dive place and booked on a dive for Tuesday. We rented a DVD player for the room as there are no English speaking channels, and got the next series of Dexter to watch when it’s raining! Had our dinner in the hotel and later I got to Skype with Mum and Emma, and later Dad! It’s so nice to speak face to face, it makes us feel much closer to home than we really are!