In this short three minute video, we try to give an impression of what our two weeks was like on the island paradise of Koh Lanta. We hope you enjoy it. As usual, if the video isn’t working, make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed. And as always, we like feedback.

Unfortunately for us, we used up our free month and didn’t extend our visas in Bangkok. Not wanting to leave the beach early, and not wanting to pay the hefty 500 Baht per day overstay charge, we were left with only one option: the Visa Run.

A visa run is a trip to a neighboring country for the express purpose of renewing your visa. Thailand will give you the free one month tourist visa a few times, so all you have to do is leave the country and come back, even on the same day.

Koh Lanta has lots of long-term scuba instructors and dive masters, as well as plenty of beach bums like ourselves looking to stay for weeks and months. It is also relatively close to a border crossing in Malaysia. As a result, there is a visa run service available on the island. It’s not cheap at 1200 Baht per person ($40), but beats leaving the beach when you’re not ready.

We were told to be at the front desk at 7am on the day of our visa run. The good news was that they were supposed to provide breakfast. We turned up bleary-eyed and caffeine-starved at the appropriate time, but ended up waiting around for about 45 minutes before the van pulled up. There were already a couple of people in there when we hopped in, and we drove along the strip filling up the van before we stopped and the driver said, “Breakfast.”

Breakfast consisted of a cup of Nescafe and two pieces of toast. At around 8:45, we finally loaded up the van again and took off for Malaysia. Why they didn’t just pick us up at 9 and tell us to fend for ourselves, we’ll never know. Two ferry crossings and some crazy driving later, we were on the mainland and speeding towards our destination.

With the exception of one young Swedish guy, everyone else in our van (10 total) looked like they’d been in Thailand for years, and it was not the first time they’d done the visa run. Some of them had pillows and plenty of supplies (they must have known not to rely on the free “breakfast”), and one guy even brought his laptop. It turned out to be a godsend, because the trip took much longer than quoted. We were entertained by half of Seinfeld Season 8 on the way there and back. There were some classic episodes, the soup nazi being a standout.

Once we actually got to Malaysia the process was fairly straightforward: you simply get stamped out of Thailand, walk across the border to Malaysia, get an entrance stamp, promptly turn around and get an exit stamp, and then walk back into Thailand and get a fresh visa. There’s a duty free store in between, so we stopped and bought some snacks and drinks in Malaysia (but paid in Baht).

An hour later everyone had their visas and our crazy driver treated us to more twists and turns and a little bit of motion sickness. There’s also a prominently mentioned stop at Tesco’s in Trang. Before doing the Visa Run we didn’t know why that was necessary. And then we walked inside. It was a wonderland, like finding a Wal-Mart in the Himalayas or something. They had everything we’d been looking for (the island doesn’t have any big shops) at low prices and in large quantities. And they had a KFC, which was patronized by every member of our visa run mission (including us). For those foreigners living on Koh Lanta making their monthly visa run, the Tesco’s stop is a chance to load up on anything and everything, and eat some fast food.

They told us we’d be back around 5pm, but they dropped us off at around 8. It was a very long day, sitting in the back of a hot van hurtling down windy roads, watching Seinfeld, fighting nausea. The things we do for a few more days at the beach.

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.

Episode 14 is from Bangkok, the gateway to both Thailand and all of Southeast Asia. It’s a beautiful city with plenty of culture, yet as a backpacker (heading straight from the Indian subcontinent) it’s tough not to spend lots of time on Khao San Road. In this episode we’ve got some of the main sights around Bangkok, as well as an introduction to that infamous backpacker haunt. If the video doesn’t work, make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed. Enjoy!

Lucky Thirteen for BTBtv, with a video about the crazy party island of Koh Pha Ngan (I’m finally spelling it right!) in the Gulf of Thailand. Beautiful beaches and a non-stop party atmosphere make this one of Thailand’s most popular destinations, particulary with young backpackers. We didn’t make it to a Full Moon Party, but I think you can kind of get the idea. And of course we’d like to thank our special guests for helping us out! As usual, if you don’t see the video make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed.

First came Elisa, a friend from California who we met on JET. She and her two friends Traci and Phil met up with us in Hat Rin, the party beach on Ko Pah Ngan. Here’s a photo of the ladies, me, Elisa, and Traci:

And the guys, Phil and Kevin:

We had a blast! Each night we hit up the beach parties and enjoyed the drink buckets, djs, hilariously bad dancers (myself not excluded), and just good company.

The four days together flew by fast, and after we said goodbye Kevin and I made the long 13 hour journey back up to Bangkok to meet our other wonderful friend Chris from Hawaii (who we also met on JET in Kyoto).

He and his girlfriend Krystal used to live in the apartment below us and it was ridiculously fun having them so close by. Chris came to Thailand by himself on a business trip but we got lucky enough to have two full days painting the town together and catching up.

Man, it made me really miss the old times, but it was so great to hang out again.

The first beach

We went to Than Sadet, which had a handful of bungalows on a little bay with turquoise water and white sand. The area has huge boulders strewn in the water, on the beach, and up the dramatic hills. Apparently a long time ago Thai kings liked to walk around the boulders there. It was beautiful. There couldn’t have been more than forty people staying in the area. We liked to go for a swim in the morning and usually we’d be the only people out there, which was pretty neat.
 

In our rustic bungalow one night a huge roach dropped on Kevin from the ceiling! He let out a yell and I giggled, saying “they don’t bite, what’s the big deal?” just to give him a hard time. He was like, “just you wait til it happens to you, you’ll be screaming and freaking out!” 

A little too far out there

 
Turned out that Than Sadet was even more remote than we thought. We needed to get in touch with our friends, but we couldn’t find an internet connection. We tried hiking to one, but after a couple of hours of killer heat and steep hills, we turned back. So we caught a ride with some guys taking people on a day boat trip up north to Ao Thong Nai Pan Yai to stay for a few day. It’s a gorgeous bay also with white sand and turquoise water. It had more bungalows, restaurants, bars, general stores, and internet cafes, but retained its quiet appeal. The places to stay and eat are right on the beach, so you can go for a swim in the warm and clear water, lay on the soft sand, sip on a fresh juice, and drag yourself to your room for that afternoon nap all within 50 yards. At night the restaurants and bars put candle-lit low tables on the sand and cushions to lay on. It was fantastic.

Our first night there we stayed in a very cheap bungalow, but it was shabby. And, of course, a very large roach fell from the ceiling on….Kevin. And the terrible person that I am laughed again. (How couldn’t I after he told me I was next and he was wrong?) So we moved the next night to a much nicer one with no roaches.

Out for all to see

 
We had a relaxing few days on the beach and it was pretty perfect. Although one thing was slightly off-putting. Our guidebook says Thais find it very offensive or get the wrong message if foreign women go topless on the beach. However, we found several people breaking the taboo. Some of them weren’t so bad, strategically holding their book or putting their top on as soon as they got up, etc. But this one lady near us didn’t have her top on all day, including at our neighboring table at the beach restaurant. It was like a car accident, you don’t want to look but you can’t look away. I don’t think it helped that they were huge and she wasn’t very attractive. She was eating, playing with her two small kids, blabbering on to her husband as if her boobs weren’t out. Then some Thai guys were fixing a motor on a boat and she and her husband brought their kids over and took pictures by them. We were like, isn’t that a little weird? Anyway, it made us uncomfortable. Other than that, though, we’d highly recommend a relaxing vacation to Than Sadet or Ao Thong Nai Pan Yai.

The night train from Bangkok very inconveniently arrives in Surat Thani at 4am. The train attendant roused us a few minutes before we pulled in, so we had just a short time to enter a slightly zombie-like state and grab our gear and hop off. Fifteen minutes later, while sipping coffee and eating toast at a small cafe, it all came to me like a flash, and was quickly followed by a string of obscenities. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing like this had happened in the entire six months of traveling. We had to get it; abandoning it wasn’t an option. I knew it would be bad, but had no idea the adventure that was in store for us.

I quickly explained what had happened to the owner of the restaurant, and he told me it would be fine. They’d just tell the station manager, who in turn would radio the train attendant and find my bag and chuck it off at the next stop. If everything went well they could put it on the next train back and I could collect it at my leisure. He sent me to the station with a guy who had been hanging out in the cafe, and I explained the situation in further detail. When I said we would be on Koh Phan Ng for two weeks, he made a clicking sound. That was probably too long to leave something lying around in the Station Master’s office.

When we walked into his office, the guy was asleep on a bench against the wall. He quickly roused himself and hailed the train. There was lots of talking, of which I understood nothing, but it looked like they were making progress. I described the missing item. They didn’t quite get “tripod,” so I went with “legs for camera,” a fitting description I picked up from a Swiss woman we met on a train in India. That helped a lot. It looked like things would work out.

The only problem was that we had been on an express train. The next stop, a town called Thong Seung, was 150 kilometers away. “No problem,” the guy helping me said. “I have car. If we leave now, we get you to pier by 8am for ferry to Koh Phan Ng.” I was thinking it was all too good to be true. Who exactly was this kind stranger, and how much would this cost me? He said to tell “his woman” in the cafe that he would be driving us down there. We got our stuff, I hurriedly explained the situation to Val, and we were off. The man drove like a maniac down empty roads for about fifteen minutes, then we pulled over at a gas station.

It was at this point that I was planning on offering some money. I figured I’d fill up his tank and throw in a little extra for the effort. I had fixed 1000 Baht (about $33) as a fair price in my mind. I got out and he said, “Okay, you give me 2500 Baht.” That’s over $70, an exorbitant price by my approximation. The guy was a fricking taxi driver apparently, although his car was unmarked and he acted like he was helping us out. I refused, gave him 500 Baht (also an exorbitant price) for him to take us right back to town. Whenever we bail in situations like this, I always give more money than necessary, so I know there won’t be any haggling or trouble.

He took us back to town, somewhat sullenly, and let us off at the train station. I figured we could make our own way there for much, much cheaper. For 2500 Baht you could almost fly to Bangkok from where we were, one way. First I had to find out if they had even found the tripod and, also important, taken it off the train. The cafe owner said that they had, but that if we took the train we’d waste a day. For us money is extremely finite, time somewhat less so. “That’s fine” I said, and we hit the train station again.

Two single tickets to Thong Seung cost us 52 Baht. We had to wait an hour for the train to leave, and it took almost two and a half hours to get there. The whole time we were waiting for our train, people kept coming up to us and asking where we were headed. It seemed they were a little uneasy about us taking the local transport. Maybe they assumed we were just confused. A guy walking around with a huge platter of fried chicken (at 6 o’clock in the morning) helped us get on the right train and into the unreserved car, where we’d become an object of curiosity for the whole trip.

The ride 150k south was beautiful. The sun was just rising, revealing a lush tropical landscape of palms, banana trees, coconut groves, small waterways, distant mountains, and lots of traditional houses and communities. There was a constant stream of hawkers on the train, almost of all of whom completely ignored us. Only when they came from behind us and couldn’t see would they offer us their stuff. Mostly it was the ubiquitous fried chicken.

When we finally got to Thong Seung we were flagging. We had been on trains since 5:30pm the previous day, and had barely slept at all. I looked for the station master’s office, but found a guy who said, “No have.” I had already told Val something along the lines of, “If my tripod isn’t here I’m going to kill somebody,” so I didn’t receive this news very well. I brushed him off and kept searching. Apparently I fit the description of a slightly perturbed white guy who’d be looking for something, because a soldier came up and took me right to my tripod. I was elated to see it; they were relieved to see that its owner had arrived. Everyone was happy. The guy I had brushed past earlier sheepishly apologized.

We had to wait for another hour and a half for a train to take us back to Surat Thani. It was only 9:30am and it had already been a really long day. People once again came up to us in a steady stream, asking where we were headed. It was probably the biggest thing to happen at that station for the day. It was great how much help they offered, and how they all took it upon themselves to make sure we got back to a place where farangs (the Thai word for foreigner) normally went.

While we waited we attracted the attention of some of the locals. An elderly man sat down in front of us and just turned around and stared at us for about ten minutes before he decided there was nothing much going on and left. Three women nearby kept looking at us and chatting, and then they broke out their digital camera. After taking pictures of each other, we saw them taking pictures of us. Eventually we posed for pictures with all three of them (separately). They had a great time, and of course we thought it was hilarious.

The train was delayed, but eventually we were on it and heading back to Surat Thani. The same hawkers were walking by with the same platters of fried chicken from the morning (making it unappetizing), though they had obviously sold a little. We were once again objects of intense curiosity. The heat and humidity, combined with our lack of sleep, was like an endurance test. After another two and a half hours on the train, we finally arrived back in Surat Thani at around 2pm. After ten hours, we had made it 150k south and back, and successfully recovered my tripod. Some of the station workers saw us and started laughing, happy to see that we had completed the arduous journey and retrieved our belongings.

Total cost of the round trip: 104 Baht ($3.30). And the usual assortment of great memories and experiences only available on local transport, free of charge.

We’re not so much into the party scene, but came for the northeast corner of the island’s tranquil, relaxed beaches. After a few days on the island it’s safe to say this is pretty much what we were looking for. Getting here was pretty easy, except for a minor problem involving me leaving my tripod on the train (which arrived at 4am, my excuse), and then spending almost an entire day retrieving it from a town only 150 kilometers away. The wacky, exhausting adventure took about ten hours, and will be explained in detail in due time.

Just because we may be on an island in the Gulf of Thailand doesn’t mean that we are away from modern conveniences. I’m typing this post now in an air-conditioned internet cafe that is nicer than any we used during our time in Nepal or India, possibly even Egypt or Turkey too. So we’ll be catching up on posts over the next couple of days, and we also plan on outlining the next few stages of our trip. Don’t expect too much, however: we’re on an island paradise, after all.