Ban Si Ra Ya

Went to breakfast at 9.00am & firstly was disturbed to find 2 Irish tinkers in the pool drinking beer & playing music loudly for that time of the morning. I hope to hell they are not in the room next to us. Come back sour krauts all is forgiven.

We were then thrown off kilter by the breakfast buffet disappearing & instead a cook to order policy. We both ordered the American breakfast of decent coffee, juice, toast that was bread that would have been more toasted if left in the sun for 10 minutes, decent scrambled eggs & a hideous chicken sausage & ham.

After breakfast we hired a scooter & set out for the top of the island. Our first stop was Long Beach, which we soon considered lucky we weren’t staying at. It was dull & lifeless.

We continued on & spotted an old hotel, Lanta Mermaid, we had stayed in for 3 nights back in 2012. We stopped to inspect the beach & decided it was pretty good, but we prefer where we are now. We had a walk to blow away a few cobwebs & we were struck by how much more built up it was since we stayed there.

Onwards & northwards we went until we arrived at Ban Sala Dan. We drove through the ‘Walking Street Market’ & was very impressed with the little seafront restaurants & shops. It was our first visit & didn’t know it existed before.

We then picked up the road that runs down the eastern side of the island & headed south towards Old Lanta Town. There are no beaches to speak of on this side of the island, instead mangroves & a dug up road ‘Under Construction’. We had to slow to avoid ploughing in to a troop of monkeys crossing the road.

We rode straight past Old Lanta Town & pioneered our way along virtually dirt roads to the southern end of the island. It was an arduous journey & quite frankly not worth the effort. The only thing of note at the end was a school that was having a children’s day, that all the parents seemed to be attending. Not our scene!

We returned to Old Lanta Town, parked up & had a stroll through the high street. Jackie accurately compared it to an eastern version of an old western town in America without the Sheriffs. It was very quaint. The restaurants on the sea side are all at the end of jettys. We selected Pinto Restaurant, because no-one was trying to entice us in.

The waitresses seemed a bit miserable, but I did my usual of grinning like an idiot & loudly saying hello to them, forcing them into a response. Jackie hates it when I do that!

Both the setting & food were glorious. Jackie had a seafood & lemongrass salad & I had sweet & sour pork & vegetables. It was a very enjoyable meal & the waitress even smiled.

After a stroll around, we saddled up & cut through the island back to the western coast. We passed Mrs Thip at her Lanta Thip House. This was the other place we stayed at in 2012, which is ingrained in our memory after Jackie hurled a hefty glass ashtray through the balcony ceiling of the flat below just missing the occupants, but that is another story!

We stopped at Beautiful Beach for old times sake & had a beer from the shack in the dying sun. It was an appropriate place to end a beautiful day.

We now have a new set of sour Krauts next to us, but I did my usual & forced them into begrudgingly saying hello.

That night we returned to MaMa’s Style for an eclectic mix of battered calamari & chips, morning glory & Massaman curry for me. We still haven’t repeated the morning glory that was so good in Spicy Spicy.

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