Back on Lanta yet again! Instead of going straight back Lanta Family, we dove into the horde of touts at the pier and found a place as far south as possible on Lanta Yai. After a long, extremely uncomfortable ride in the back of a pickup truck we arrived at Sunmoon Resort. All of the double rooms were booked, so they offered us a deal on two single bungalows for 150 baht / night each!

The beach here is beautiful and great for swimming, its a short hike away from a (supposedly) nice waterfall swimming-hole and its even quieter than Khong Klong beach where we were before. Tomorrow we’ll go back to Lanta Family to help them set up for Thong’s birthday party…

Thong helped Sarah and I book a ticket to Ko Muk, a very small island south of Ko Lanta, for 8am this morning. We made it to the pier on time and arrived on the island before noon. Ko Muk doesn’t have a pier or dock so the ferry stops near enough for a longtail to come pick up some passengers and bring them to the beach.

We walked around to a couple resorts right on the water to find a place to stay, but the first two we checked were extremely expensive (relative to ko lanta!) at 700 and 1200 baht / night (US$17.50 and US$30). We kept walking inland and found Hadfarang Bunglows who had double rooms for 350 baht / night (about US$8). Also, the restaurant at Hadfarang, JJ’s, was highly recommended by a group of Swedish travelers I met in Krabi last week. We took one of the bungalows and shared it with a variety of lizards, grasshoppers, mosquitos, butterflies, moths, gnats and snails. It sounds bad but was actually pleasant - none of them bothered us and the room had mosquito nets.

Ko Muk has no ATMs, though, and we didn’t anticipate this. Since I had lost my wallet the night before, Sarah and I had only around 2,000 baht between us which needed to cover everything including the 800 baht boat trip back to Ko Lanta. We managed to spend only part of it and still enjoy several great meals including a BBQ feast that night at JJ’s.

During the day, I went for a walk across the island (only a few km’s, the island is pretty small). Outside of the main tourist area (“Charlie beach”) the island is home to a few very poor muslim fishing villages. Several times as I went through the streets kids would point and shout “farang! farang!” or run up to me to practice their english: “Hello! What your name?!” I walked as far as I was allowed - at one point a family came out into the road and told me “no farang allowed here”.

The parts of the island that have electicity only have it for a few hours each day - one period in the morning and again at night. From what I saw, the majority of the island doesn’t get any power at all.

We would have stayed another night if we had been more prepared with money, but we booked our ride back to Lanta and arrived in the afternoon.

Back on Lanta Yai again! At Lanta Family Resort, of course, with Thong and Mr. T :). The two and a half days we spent back here sort of melted together… many people here say the same about their 3-or-4-months-and-counting stay… At one of the bars down the beach there was a 2-day long party with several good bands and many faces I recognized from last week. One of the bands, Islander, will be playing at Lanta Family on the 26th for Thong’s birthday so Sarah and I have planned to be back there in time for it. On the night of the 23rd, Sarah and I were taking photos with a bunch of friends on the sand - jumping around being goofy…

I took my wallet and phone out of my pocket and set them on the sand for a bit. When I went to find them later on, they had dissapeared! I knew it would happen sooner or later. The only important things in my wallet were my bank card (already canceled) and some cash (a couple thousand baht). Not a huge loss. Matt, a friend who works at the bar, is keeping an eye out for me in case it shows up by the time we return there on the 26th…

Early in the morning we split a longtail ride to Phi Phi Leh with another pair of travelers. The tide was a bit lower than last time so we went around the other side of the island to see a different lagoon after stopping at Maya beach. We made it back to Phi Phi in time to catch the afternoon ferry to Ko Lanta…

This time around, the Thai Hotel in Krabi ended up being the worst hotel experience I’ve had to date. We opted for a double fan room instead of a double AC room as Brandon and I had done the last time I was there. First, Sarah found a big roach in the bathroom - no big deal, most of the places I’ve been in southern Thailand so far have some roaches. Then we noticed that the bathroom is also home to a few dozen small spiders. Not so bad, but taking a shower was a slight challenge at this point… Then Sarah laid down in her bed and realized that it was crawling with ants. Its pretty hard to be comfortable when you’re lying amongst a colony of ants… We went down to reception and they reacted as if this is completely normal, so we paid the extra baht to upgrade to an AC room, which was far cleaner and featured insect-free beds. In the morning, we bought a ticket to Ko Phi Phi (I had just been there last week, but it would be a crime if Sarah were to miss Ko Phi Phi Leh) for that afternoon. It was still pretty early so we walked towards the beach and found a longtail driver to take us on a quick tour around Krabi. He took us along the mangrove forest to spot some iguanas, to a large cave and to a fish farm where they raised all sorts of tropical fish. We went back to town and caught the ferry to Phi Phi where we booked a double room for the night.

In Krabi again now! This morning I rode the Chao Phraya ferries up and down the river seeing some tourist stuff and taking photos before catching a taxi with Sarah to the airport. We’re now in a hotel in Krabi City with plans to take a boat to one of the islands tomorrow…

PS - I’ve got a Thai mobile phone number now. Send me a text message! (If you call it will last all of 10 seconds or more likely not work at all because I have about 400 baht of credit). My number is 031373623. I don’t know what the Thailand country code is…

Sarah and I walked around a few spots, including one of the large malls (MBK) near Siam Square looking for deals on camera equipment. Not much was found. Later on we booked a flight to Krabi for the next afternoon to explore some more islands in the south…

It turns out that the dateline time-difference befuddled me once again and I arrived in Bangkok one full day before Sarah was to arrive. Oh well. After the afternoon boat ride and 4-hour-delayed flight, I was throughly exhausted and found a room off of Khao San for the night. The next day I booked a decent double room (with AC and a bathroom) as Sarah was set to arrive at 2:00am that night. I used the day to explore the city on foot and by taxi - Siam Square, China Town, Banglamphu, Sukumvhit and a few neighborhoods inbetween. A partied-out Brandon arrived from Krabi in the evening, so we had dinner together and hung out until Sarah was expected to show up around 3:00am. Brandon was falling asleep and I was getting quite worried, so we said our goodbyes and I set out to find Sarah. I walked up and down Khao San road, leaving notes and checking in various hotels trying to find her, but had to give up around 5:30am (the scene on Khao San at 5:30am is rather seedy - in a not-really-dangerous-but-sort-of-creepy way). I managed to sleep for a few hours and checked up on our meeting spot in the morning. Even though Sarah was there, she was not given the note I had left for her and so had left a note for me. The reception girl didn’t even tell me about it when I specifically asked if there was a note for Jordan! I even looked over the sheet of names with rooms booked at the hotel, which she wasn’t listed on. Sometimes the language barrier is a bitch… Eventually we connected via email and I caught up with her at noon at our original meeting point. Apparently the taxi driver thought he knew the specific hotel she was looking for but drove her to the wrong neighborhood (Sukumvhit). So she booked a room there and found Khao San early in the morning. Next time we’ll just meet at the airport!

Koh Lanta lived up to my mental image of the lazy tropical Thai island: friendly, lazy and beautiful. Brandon and I spent plenty of time napping in hammocks and drinking beer on the beach, hanging out with other travelers and locals (inbetween which there is a lot of grey area). Upon arriving we were greeted by a wall of touts each offering a free taxi ride to their bungalows or resorts. We decided to go with Thong to the Lanta Family Resort. On the pickup-truck ride from the pier with Thong we met the charming (and always drunk) Mr. T, who lives in a shack next to the bar at the “resort”.

We settled into a two-bed bungalow about 100 feet from the beach for 300 baht and napped in the hammocks for a few hours. Before the sun went down we took a walk up the beach towards the town and found several empty beaches, although the swimming was not great because of the tide. I ended up turning in early that night, passing up on some late night wandering around / drinking.

The next day we decided to go on an elephant trek. Since Thailand outlawed the logging of native hardwood trees, most of the country’s elephants have been out of work. In an effort to save them many were transported to the south to live on carrying tourists on jungle treks. We went to another “resort” where they arranged the trek for us and were soon sitting on top of Bo, our friendly elephant guide. I would describe the experience not so much as a trek but more of something like “an hour in the life of an elephant”. There seemed to be a set path that Bo was to follow, but he did so at his own pace. Every couple minutes he stopped to mess around with some tree or a bush. We made our around back to the starting point and bought a bunch of bananas to feed Bo before we headed back home.

It ended up being a relatively mellow night as most of the people around were preparing for the full moon party that was scheduled for the next night, which I missed because of my flight back to Bangkok… Brandon stuck around for the party, though, which sounded fun.

Even though Koh Phi Phi has the reputation of being quite touristy, it’s still supposed to be one the most beautiful Thai islands. Just next to the main island of Phi Phi is Phi Phi Leh, the island made famous by the movie The Beach. We arrived in the late afternoon, found a very basic double room for 450 baht and then hit the town for food and drinks. The next morning we hired a longtail boat driver guide to take us around the island for a couple hours. Incredible. We swam in the warm, crystal-clear water and sat on Maya beach. After riding back we lazed around for a bit then went out again for another night filled with scandanavians, beer and buckets. I’m going to start calling Thailand “New Sweden”.

Just as the night was getting started, Brandon and I were watching a kick-boxing match at a bar in town when a stampede of people ran inside and up the stairs. Soon almost everyone was upstairs asking eachother what was going on - apparently there was an earthquake reported in the ocean and someone started a tsunami panic. In the short period of time before we all found out that there was nothing to worry about, much of the town closed up. The night didn’t pick up again for a few hours, but we stayed out until sunrise… In the morning we hopped on a boat to Koh Lanta.