Lanta Long Beach Ko Lanta

... br>about when the bitter cold of Canadian winters pushes me too far.

Alanis Morrisette,
KD Lang and Brian Adams have just played consecutively on the speaker behind me
at the resorts bar. Clearly some Canadian traveler here left behind a music disc for the Thai people at some point. Not exactly my first three choices of artists, but at least I
can boast they are fellow canucks.

 

Today:

I changed
resorts yesterday. I ...

From Sukothai we took the overnight bus to Kanchanaburi, which is North West from Bangkok. We had two nights there staying in a lovely guesthouse. On the first day we went to a tiger temple. First you were taken into see the big tigers, you are able to have photos taken with them and stroke them which was cool, but scary!! Then we got to see the tiger cubs which were adorable and so playful.

On the second day we decided to get public transport to Erawan ...

... but that didn't happen. While they were hot and cranky, they remained aloof. Finally the gangster realized that we were not going to budge and he decided that everyone else had to pay more - 10 Baht each. I thought that was a compromise - a stupid one but everyone handed over an extra 10 Baht and away we went. We arrived on shore to more extortionists - the moto taxi guys who charge Thais 50 Baht for a ride into the village and 'farang ...

... of - one great thing about locals who speak English! - and we had Sangria there. K had been bigging himself up on how big a night he would/could have - but had a bit too much of everything at the same time. The bucket owned HIM rather than the other way around as he wanted to believe. So he went to bed! We left Steve to relax a little and winding down but later he came for Sangria. Which didn't agree with him unfortunately. But for the rest of us the night was cup after cup - I ...

... while Alan slept it off. The next morning we had to check out of our little haven and start the journey to Ko Lanta where we wanted to spend New Year. We had no planning or research done so we were pretty much just winging it. Alan still wasn't feeling well and was making frequent trips to the bathroom. We got a taxi to the ferry port and tried to find out where to buy ferry tickets to get to Satun in Thailand. After much waiting around and a delayed boarding we were finally ...

... out to 15m around the penisular and up to the shalf. On the way we see 3 hawsbill turtles feeding on the coral! That and a number of rarer coloured reef fish, we finish a very sucessful dive. Back to the boat and we are relieved to be heading back to dry land. The rest of the day is spent recovering. The third dive is supposed to ve a night dive - very scary indeed- but kim simply isn't up to it after being so ill during the day and they won't take a boat out ...