Tripping to Koh Lanta

Another day, Another Place. This time we make our way towards Koh Lanta for a few days of lying on the beach doing absolutely nothing. I tell you, this travel business is hard work.

Anyway, after yet another day of no exercise, I decided to brave the morning heat and head outside for a run along the Krabi Town waterfront. About 20 minutes in, the heat was causing me all sorts of problems and I stopped for a quick rest and then continued on, heading back in the direction of the hotel. As I normally run a minimum of 40 minutes a day and average 1.5 hours most days of the week, the fact I could barely manage 20 minutes is causing me some concern. But these are not normal conditions and my heart rate skyrocketing to 180 beats per minute in just a few minutes also suggests that this is the case.

Back at the hotel and in the comfort of our air conditioned hotel room, I lay on the cold marble floor gasping for air and water, while Jamie watched on struggling to understand why I do this to myself. I'll tell you why - too many chilli broad beans, banana fruit shakes and espresso frappes paired with an increasingly bigger stomach. I don't want to arrive back in New Zealand and have problems clearing customs if they can't recognise me anymore due to an extra chin and layer of fat.

So, once I had recovered enough to have a shower, we made our way down to breakfast and then awaited our transportation to the ferry terminal (a hut). Upon arriving at the terminal, I grabbed yet another banana fruit shake (just banana, ice and water) because I had run this morning and therefore totally deserved one while awaiting the boarding of our ferry. Once on board, we settled in, watching the islands pass us and the colour of the sea becoming more turquoise while listening to some great hits by Adele, preparing me to attend her concert with Maeve in March.

A few hours later and we arrived on the island of Koh Lanta, and to my dismay, the boat we were on started pumping out unused diesel into the blue pristine ocean (see photo below for evidence of the horrible hydrocarbon sheen). It made me angry and sad that companies get away with such terrible environmental practices which seem even more prevalent in this part of the world. After paying a 10 baht "clean up" tax for the parking lot (aaaaaargh), we braved the onslaught of tuk tuk drivers in the very unclean parking lot until we could find one who would take us the 4km to our hotel for a reasonable price. Jamie bartered hard with a local lady, who initially started off at 200 baht (which you can get a taxi to take you at least 15km for in places like Bangkok) but we managed to get her down to 100 baht and then made our way to our hotel. She wasn't overly happy but fortunately as Jamie alluded to in his post yesterday, we've been travelling for long enough now to know the deal and she certainly was still getting a good one.

We got to our hotel, and were pleased with the little villa we had paid for but then found out that Jamie had forgotten to pack the bottle of wine we had purchased in Krabi which was to be enjoyed in our outdoor bath. Cue sadness, cue tears, cue sorrow. Another day without wine - how will I cope? For this unforgiveable sacrifice, I made sure that we were around for Happy Hour and ordered a Mojito to overcome my pain of the missing wine.

Teemu (normally silent and tee-total) also showed his disgust for Jamie by shunning him and sat in the outdoor bath alone to overcome his tormented soul. I was the bigger person and decided that we should head for dinner where more cocktails could be purchased and Jamie could pay for his horrendous blunder. Dinner was at a local restaurant named Irie, which specialised in Vegan dishes but fortunately for my manly meat eater they also did a wide range of meat dishes. We had some sensational spring rolls, curries and for dessert a Vegan Chocolate Mousse. Now it was Jamie's turn to feel disgusted as a mousse apparently isn't a mousse without a heart attack amount of cream.

We chose to walk off dinner by having a quick jaunt along the beach, where we could see fire dancing and neon lights of the countless bars in the near distance. Being the intense party animals that we are, we made our way back to our room at the absurdly late time of 8pm, ready for some TV and sleep.Read more