From Bangkok to Trang on the train was all in all, a long but good journey, it may have arrived 2 hours later than advertised but after 4 months of travelling around South East Asia, the odd loose snake and broken down boat, this was a breeze. Miss Alex will testify to it being a breeze as the air con was too cold for her to sleep in, me being the hot blooded male it was heaven. As soon as we stepped off the train we had to brace ourselves for the usual clutter of touts ready to offer us our mini bus ticket to Koh Lanta. Koh Lanta was still 2 hours away but we didn’t mind as we were just happy to be back in the South of Thailand. Koh Lanta is one of our favourite places in Thailand. As the mini van driver was dropping off passengers to their destinations and also packages, miss Alex told me she really needed the loo. This confirmed for me that all my pre bus journey toilet stops, to relieve my bladder wasn’t such a crazy thing after all. Meanwhile our mini van driver seemed to stopping at every other shop to drop off another package. The only thing our very own Postman Pat was missing was his black and white cat Jessie!! We finally arrived at our guest house. We’d stayed here before on our first and second visit to Koh Lanta. The Green Garden is a great guest house with basic Bungalows but the location is the deal clincher. The reception area and restaurant/bar hover over the beach on wooden stilts, also private beach huts available to hide from the intense mid day heat.
Whilst back on Koh Lanta we enjoyed a couple of beach runs, miss Alex and me love a good beach run, the only down side to running on the beach with no trainers on is the tiny shells that can fell any man!! So the break dancing moves were back along with a couple of friendly dogs wanting to play chase with us on the beach. These are the same dogs that stood like naughty school boys whilst miss Alex told them off for running along side us on our last visit to Koh Lanta. Its funny really because miss Alex and me love to people watch, over our 3 day stay we noticed several joggers getting harassed by the dogs.
We decided to hire a motorbike one day and spent the morning driving around the island. Koh Lanta is a big island but still we managed to ride more miles in 2 hours than we did in one day during our last visit. This is progress on miss Alex’s part as I didn’t have the usual screech of “SLOW DOWN” or “CORNER!!!” or my favourite screech, “THERES A CAR COMING THE OTHER WAY” The key to the bike we hired had a habit of coming out of the ignition. I was lucky to see this happen the first time, pull the breaks, park up on the side of the road and find the key behind us in the middle of the road. The bike was still running without the key, by the way. After watching plenty of Bear Grylls the survival expert I (miss Alex really did) came up with an idea of using string to tie the key to the bike so if this happened again it wouldn’t be lost in the road. The string came from miss Alex’s shorts.
The rest of the time on Koh Lanta was spent on the beach chilling out and catching some vital sun rays. We even treated ourselves to an oil massage one evening. 3 times Weve been to Koh Lanta and I can honestly say I think we’ll be back some time in the future. We really do love the chilled out feel about the place.
Now we are back on Phi Phi, this last week we realised we’ve hit a few landmarks. This week marked our 18th week away from home, Yesterday we had 6 days left in Thailand before we bid a farewell to Bali. Also the day before yesterday was the one month countdown to our flights to Australia. Miss Alex and me have talked recently about loving this part of our travels. I personally love every day as a backpacker being a Sunday, we never get the Monday blues!! But I’m so excited for the next chapter. Australia will be a different kind of travelling. We’ll have to work to subsidise our travels and our return home, but I think I’m ready for that now. Were going to miss South East Asia and in particular Thailand but a closed door will always lead to an open door.
Speak Soon xxx
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