Just when
you think you’ve got your head wrapped round the Thai way of doing things, a
simple bus ride comes along and shows you that you really have no idea.
We pay 1000
baht for a taxi pick up and ferry ride from Ao Nang port to Koh Lanta. The taxi
man picks us up. He drives up the road, turns round, and picks up three other
people from their hotel, which is on the other side of the road from ours. He
drives about 10 yards up. Does a U-turn. Stops outside another hotel where we
transfer all our stuff into another, bigger, van. Why we didn’t just meet at the hotel which is
less than a minute’s walk from ours, I don’t know.
We head off,
squeezing more and more people in on the way. Mysteriously, we then drive to
Krabi Town port. I can only assume this is because we have spent so long
faffing about, we’ve missed the Ao Nang ferry.
I don’t know
if you’ve ever tried to lift a 30kg suitcase from a dock via a gang plank
roughly the width of a picnic bench onto a ferry, but I can assure you it’s not
easy. You will maybe wrench your arms from their sockets, or scrape several
layers of skin off your feet. Many thanks to the kindly Japanese tourist (boy,
those guys travel light, his case was the size of a lap top bag) who lifted my
suitcase for me.
As our ferry
comes drifts into Saladan, we realise that a couple of Russian tourists have
been using our suitcases as a bed / picnic table / hammock. One of the latches
on Traveling Companion’s (T.C) is snapped open.
An
Australian man is utterly outraged on our behalf. He’s so angry for us, it’s
almost funny. You’ll have to imagine the following in a thick Aussie accent, to
really get a feel for the total indignation he felt for us.
‘There’s 42
fuckin’ free seats in there, and they’re sitting on your cases! It’s fuckin’
rude. You wanna put a pair of concrete boots on the pair of them and sling them
over the side!’
It’s only a
case, I say. And it’s a soft-sided one, so plenty of give.
‘But it’s
YOUR fucking case!’ he yells, like he’s in a gale. ‘Sit on your own fuckin’
case, FINE, but you don’t sit on someone else’s FUCKIN case, do ya?’
My case actually
has a really big dent in the side. He has a point. I will be well angry if my
bottle of Decleor body serum is broken, mostly because that cost about 3 times
the amount of this ferry ride. (it isn’t broken, because I’ve bubble wrapped
it. Being a Virgo has its uses sometimes.)
In the chaos
of the taxi pick-ups, TC lags behind. When the Russians are approached by their
transfer, he hovers over their shoulders trying to get the name of where they
are staying.
We don’t
actually ever find out, as we’re being ushered towards our taxi, which, like
every other kind of transport is loaded to capacity and naturally, they put us,
with the heaviest cases, who are getting out first, on first.
Which means when
we get to our hotel, everyone else has to get OFF, with all their cases, and
then back on again. In my last blog, I
praised the Thai ability to run operations like this smoothly, but perhaps it
just depends on which island you’re on.
Dusty,
thirsty, hungry (we left our hotel at 9.30 this morning and arrive at our new
place a little after 3pm, because everything in this country is longer than
frozen turkey) we are told they’re overbooked. I feel like crying. But then the
overbooked manager shows us the place she’s found for us to stay next door. It
is GORGEOUS. A little self-catering villa, with a nice big pool, massive beds
WITH PROPER DUVETS and a PROPER SOFA to sit on. All’s well, and all that.
The best (only) way to
get around Koh Lanta is by bike. Everyone gets around on bikes, even the kids.
Again, there’s not much regard for any rules of the road, and other drivers don’t
even beep when they are over taking you (which happens to us a lot as for the
first few times on the bike, I won’t stop shrieking, ‘PLEASE SLOW DOWN!’ in TC’s
ear.)
We don’t do
much over the next few days. Christmas lunch is tuna toastie and crinkle cut
chips. I have an epic hangover thanks to a couple of super strong cocktails from
Otto’s Bar the night before.
The day
after Boxing Day, we move to a hotel further down the coast. Regrettably, the
luxury villa is way beyond our budget, even with the generous discount the host
offers us to extend our stay.
We take the
scooter to the National Park, where they rinse you for an entry fee and another
fee to park the bike. It’s not National Trust style extortion, but it’s a lot
to see a shabby light-house and go on a nature walk.
A few odd
things happen here.
1) It is totally
unclear where you’re supposed to park, until a man in combat gear wielding a
baton (I might have imagined the baton) yells at you and points where you are
supposed to go, probably calling you an idiot in Thai. Wouldn’t it just be
easier to have a sign?
2) We eat
fried rice for lunch in the little caff (not National Trust prices, but
certainly National Trust standards of cooking and hygiene, i.e, nil.)This is in
itself is not strange, but we seem to do something that the serving ladies find
hilarious. They laugh for about 10 minutes solid, yelling at each other across the
room. It’s a serious case of the giggles turned up to 11, but they don’t even
bother trying to hide it. Perturbed as to what we’ve done that’s so damn funny,
we head off on our walk, the sound of their merry laughter ringing in our ears.
I do believe I heard the word farang, which in itself is not necessarily an insult,
basically translating as white foreigner,
but I do think this was a case of, ‘ha ha, aren’t them bloody foreigners daft?’
3) The
monkeys. I am terrified of them. The babies are really cute, but the older ones
try and steal anything you’re not holding onto. Backpack, bottle of water, bike
helmet. They jump up on the bikes and root through the little compartments
where you might keep food or drink. I shame TC by yelling at a monkey that
bares its teeth at me after trying to get my backpack WHILE I’M WEARING IT to ‘get
off me!’ TC says that the monkey is
going to laugh with his monkey mates about the woman that sounds like Margo
from the Good Life. The word ‘dork’ is used. OK, I am a dork. I
know that. I embrace my dorkiness. I ain’t getting into a stand-off with a
razor-toothed monkey. I really don’t want to have to kick one, or punch it in
the face. So I do what all big girls do, and that’s scream and run away.
Anyway, we
spend a few minutes watching the monkeys climb up into the trees and then dive
bomb into the river, before they take agin
us and start hissing at me. I run away from monkeys a total of three times that
day.
4) The
nature walk is not really a walk. It’s more of a hike through the jungle. A
stone path has been built the whole way though, cutting into vast tree trunks
and thick vines when required. There’s some moments of mild peril as you step
close the edge of a steep drop into green nothingness. As the flagstones are
slippery, one wrong footing…. Again, the Thai timing of things is a bit off –
the sign says the walk takes two hours. It takes about 45 minutes.
Today we
take a trip to Lanta Old Town. It’s basically a street built on the sea. All
the buildings are on stilts. You can hear the waves beneath you as you walk
around the shops. Here, some of the shops are much less ‘tacky tourist’ style,
and have adopted a rustic, home-made trendy look that wouldn’t be out of place
in London. I find a shop that isn’t selling tie-dye or elephant print or fake
Billabong shorts, and buy two jersey dresses that look like they’ve been
handmade (they have actually been handmade, there’s no washing instructions in
them.) We have a disappointing and very windy lunch (first time I’ve ever had
to hold a plate of French ‘Fried’ down) in a viewpoint café.
We get back
to the hotel and I realise that wearing harem pants the last couple of days
mean that my feet are Ronseal brown while the rest of me is somewhere near
Strong Tea #3.
