There haven’t been too many updates for the past two weeks or so because we’ve been too busy doing nothing. A friend who used to live in Thailand recommended checking out the Andaman Sea side of the country and the beautiful waters there. So we took off for Koh Lanta, an island renowned for its long, tranquil beaches and slow-paced lifestyle.

The Journey

From any travel agent on Khao San Road, you can book relatively inexpensive tickets to places all over Thailand or Southeast Asia. If you book to a destination in Thailand, you are thrown into a well-oiled tourist-moving machine the likes of which we’ve experienced nowhere else on the Big Trip. We showed up at our travel agent at 5pm, and were collected by a woman leading a long chain of backpackers down the road, popping her head into every guesthouse and travel agent along the way to pick up more.

She led this conga line of travelers to a small bus station just off Khao San Road, which is much more convenient than the distant public bus terminals. There we were sorted into groups according to destination. Show your ticket and get checked in and you get a colored sticker. Each time a bus shows up, they just look around for the right stickers and then herd you onto the bus. Presumably to save money, they just drive everyone heading south of Bangkok to Surat Thani. From there some stickers head to Koh Pha Ngan, Koh Samui and Koh Tao, and others head to Krabi. From there they send people to Phuket, Krabi beach, or in our case, Koh Lanta. It’s amazing how well they’ve got it all worked out.

Nothing Doing

As I said before, there’s not much to do on Koh Lanta. We stayed at the Lanta Longbeach Resort, which suited our needs perfectly. For 600 Baht we had a bungalow set back in a coconut grove with mosquito net, fans, bathroom, and a porch. There weren’t many people there, so when we were chilling on the porch it felt like we had the whole island to ourselves. It wasn’t too far from the beach to hear the waves, yet it was far enough in to hear plenty of birds and insects, notably cicadas in the morning and evening.

We fell into a routine pretty quickly, which consisted of lathering up with sunscreen (imported via Chris from Hawaii to avoid another sunburn incident) before heading out to breakfast at any one of the chilled out restaurants and guesthouses along the beach. But we couldn’t have breakfast without our favorite past time on the island: floating.

Basically, the waters are so calm on Koh Lanta, particularly in the morning, that the best thing to do is just float on your back in the water and soak up the sun. The surf is always calm, with only one line of breakers. Past that, as long as there’s not much wind, the water is almost completely still. I’m slightly convinced that the salt content of the water is higher near the island too, because it was effortless to float motionless on top of the water forever.

Pass the Mangos Please

We have a slight obsession with mangos. Not that we don’t enjoy the other tropical fruit found aplenty all over Thailand: pineapples, papayas, bananas, watermelon. It’s just that nothing comes close to the awesomeness of a mango. That’s why we were surprised (shocked and disgusted, even) when we ordered juice or shakes a few times and quickly realized they were using CANNED mangos. In tropical paradise. The outrage! And after a few weeks in Thailand, our palates cannot be fooled by such a pale and pitiful imitation.

Our only choice was to rent a motorbike and drive into town and purchase a very large supply of mangos. The last straw was when we spotted mango pancakes on the menu at a place we were having dinner, so the next morning we came back specifically to test them out. They said, “Sorry, no have. Only banana.” So we brought two mangos to our favorite place and had them whip some up for us. We still don’t know what the deal is with that. It was easy for us to acquire more than enough to satisfy our habit, so why didn’t any of the restaurants or bungalow places serve fresh mango? Ridiculous.

Other than the small problem with the mangos, it was great. Apparently you can go on snorkeling or diving trips, but we weren’t interested. It was too easy to float, eat breakfast, float, read, float, eat lunch, float, watch the sun set, float, take a shower, and then figure out where to eat dinner and which beach bar to go to. Paradise indeed.