Our last few days in Ko Lanta

Knowing we only had one full day left, on the 14th we took the 'Four Islands' tour. It was a trip on an awesome speedboat (that had three 225hp Honda engines!) around four islands just south of Ko Lanta, giving us two snorkelling stops, a beach/lunch stop and the Emerald Cave. The first snorkelling stop was great, the water was really clear so we got to see plenty of fish and coral, although most of the fish were quite small and a lot of the coral was quite bleached. I was even more gutted at this point that my Fuji underwater digital camera had broken in Vietnam because I could have got some great shots, so I had put up with taking ones from the boat.

Next stop was for some more snorkelling, this time there were even more and even bigger fish. The few guys running the trip started chucking in pieces of banana into the water, which I know you're not really supposed to do, but it meant that hundreds of brightly coloured fish swam right in front of our faces. I grabbed hold of a piece of banana, and the fish were swarming around my hand nibbling at the fruit and my hand.

Lunch time! We parked up on a beach on Koh Hai and had a couple of hours to chill out on the beach and eat the food provided. Chicken, rice, veg with some fresh fruit, all washed down with a Coke. The last stop was to see the Emerald Cave. The boat pulled up near a small cave enterance, and one of the guys jumped in the water armed with a torch and told us to follow him. We all jumped in the water, and starting swimming into the pitch black cave. At one point you could not see the enterance we had just came in through or the exit at the other end, it was just total darkness (apart from the pathetic light coming from the tour guide's torch up ahead). Luckily this wasn't for long and I could soon see the exit and swam towards it. As I swam out of the cave, it opened onto a small beach and the Emerald Cave. It is almost like being inside a volcano, you are completely surrounded by rock, with the cave being the only way to get in and out. They did offer to take my camera in a waterproof case through, but I didn't want to risk it so I've added a photo I found on Panoramio.com.

Emerald Cave enterance

Taken from Panoramio.com

15th Feb would be our last morning in Ko Lanta, so as we had a bit of time before heading to Phuket we went to say goodbye to some of the people we had gotten to know. First we went to the Welfare centre to take Pepsi and Lanta out for one last walk down to the beach and say goodbye to all the staff there. Pepsi came in the sea this time for a swim! This was becoming a pretty sad morning!

Then we went to Blue Moon to say goodbye to Gang and his eagle. He gave us our last drinks on the house which was nice! So we're going to get some prints of the photos we had taken there and post them to him, he said he is going to start a new photo album and put them in it! The eagle, who was rescued by Gang, can't fly yet because its feathers were too damaged but on our last day it decided to try so was jumping around on the ground right in front of us and gave himself a bath. Lek was nice enought to give us some little presents on check-out and drive us to the bus station. Lek is really creative and makes miniture models out of clay, so she made me a tiny monkey and made Isabella a bracelet.

The five hour coach drive to Phuket was pretty horrible. The first part we were on the back row which has an annoying hard bar underneath the whole back bench, but after being on the road for a couple of hours some of the other travellers got off, so we moved into some more comfortable seats. We were going to spend one night in Phuket because our flight was quite early in the morning, Lek offered to call a hotel we had found the details of online, although they were full and recommended another place. There was a slight lack of communication, and Lek thought the next place she had called was 'Nai Yang Beach Resort', so we got a taxi from the bus drop off point to it. Unfortunately, the place we were staying in was called Nai Yang Cottage! So after some confusing discussions with the staff at the wrong hotel we realised what had happened, and they kindly called Nai Yang Cottages for us who promptly came to collect us.

Clearly we were in luck with all the nice people we had been meeting and helping us because the guy at Nai Yang Cottages, Kitty, was also extremely helpful and friendly. He didn't want any money for collecting us in his own car. A bit later on when we had got back from dinner he offered us some food he had just cooked with what I assume was his family (his house was only across the road!) but we were full so had to decline. He then took us to the airport in the morning at around 7am, in time for our 09:50 flight to Singapore.

Lanta Animal Welfare

We're still in Ko Lanta! After Jean & Valerie and a few other guests at Fevrier Resort had looked for accomodation on some other islands, they soon realised that because of Chinese New Year (2nd to 4th Feb) the the hotels drastically increase their prices. Some as much as 6000 Baht (£120) for a basic room without air-conditioning. Rather than us going through the pain of trying to find somewhere else to sleep, (and thus giving us an excuse to stay here!) we aren't leaving until the celebrations are over.

Fevrier has by far been the nicest place we have stayed on our whole trip, I genuinely have not got a bad word to say about it. Izzy has been a bit under the weather still and not wanted to risk getting any worse so has taken things easy. Lek (the joint owner of Favrier with Malay) has been making Izzy hot drinks throughout the day, and even offered to take her to the doctors, no matter what time of day or night it is.

Of course I don't mind staying at the resort with Izzy while she is not feeling great, but I do get bored easily, so my visits to Lanta Animal Welfare have been increasing. Today I went there this morning and took Puyi, Vispen and Pepsi (still my favourite) out for a walk on the beach, and then after lunch went back to change all of the dogs water and had a bit of a play with them in the enclosures. It was nice to spend even longer with them and get a feel for their different personalities because out on a walk they are too busy sniffing around! The dogs are in good condition and seem to be happy at LAW. When I would get into the enclosures a lot of them would jump around trying to play and some of them tried de-flea me.

Pepsi

Dub Pistols & Ko Lanta

When we arrived in Ko Lanta we saw posters dotted around the town advertising that Dub Pistols were going to be playing a bar on the 27th Jan. We were unsure if it was going to be the actual band and not a cover group because the island is so small and secluded, but we went to check it out anyway. Unfortunately it wasn't the whole live band, but it was Barry Ashworth (the lead man and creator of Dub Pistols) DJing. We had an awesome time, the venue was a Klapa Klum Bar which is literally on the sand of Long Beach. I went over and said hello to Barry and told him about the time I saw him at Komedia in Bath when the crowd got up on stage. He laughed and said he remember the next day getting a call telling him the Dub Pistols are banned from ever playing in Bath again. He really took me and Izzy by surprise because he was a properly nice guy. Not that we had preconceptions of him, but he came over to our seats, shook my hand and introduced himself to Iz and sat there talking to us for a while. He even recommend some other places in the area we should visit while on our travels. On island in particular that he had visited with his fiance he said is really nice, quiet and chilled out.

When Barry went on stage to DJ, there was a problem with the decks, he kept looking over at us and gesturing a gun to his head with his hand as if to say 'just shoot me!', and as we said goodbye he even apologised to us for him not being able to play so much with the faulty equipment. But he was on stage just enough for me to get a few photos.

Ko Lanta National Park

We're really enjoying Ko Lanta and don't want to leave! Today we got up at about 9am and had breakfast at our resort, then hired another bike to do some more exploring. We stepped it up a bit today and went for a slightly more expensive bike. Fevrier, our resort, only had this one bike left and we couldn't be bothered to go and try and find a cheaper one else where, plus they did us a good deal. It's still a 125cc but it's a brand new Honda with all the gadgets, like stop-start!

So we hopped on the bike and headed south to the Ko Lanta National Park. The island itself is only 30km's long so the park isn't huge, but it has a beach, lighthouse, bit of forest and the main attraction for tourists is the monkeys. We thought we would love seeing the monkeys but they are really aggressive little shits! Three of them ran at Izzy while hissing and one of them jumped at me while I took his photo. One of the National Park employees explained to us they are angry unless you feed them, and that they get fed up of people taking their photos. Needless to say we quickly moved on to see what else was around.

Second day in Ko Lanta

When we paid the woman on the boat for our first night's accommodation we had agreed a bungalow, but when we got there they didn't have any free so they offered us a bamboo bungalow. They also have wifi, but you have to pay extra for it, and we wanted to hire a bike but they wouldn't because it was too late in the day (even though everywhere else rents bikes per 24hours). Last night we took a walk around to find somewhere else, but didn't find anywhere to make it worthy of moving. So this morning we got up early before check out time and went for another walk to find somewhere, and came across Fevrier Resort. It's a little more expensive, but has free wifi and includes breakfast which easily covers the extra cost. Not to mention the place is amazing, the people are really friendly, we're right across the road from the beach and we have an outdoor bathroom with no roof! They even drove back to our resort with us to get our bags for us!