The hut we slept in had only a large very thin mattress. When you laid on your side the 1 centimetre mattress gave way and you felt the floor underneath. And, to make matters worse, as Ko Panyi is a fishing village, the hut was next to the water and the long tail boats of the fishermen. They have the habit of sailing out at 2 am to check on their nets. Unfortunately the invention of the muffler has not yet reached this part of the world… So we were woken by the sound of their engines… It lasted for about 45 minutes and we spend the time talking where we would go next. We decided to have a look at Ko Lanta. It we didn’t like it we could always go somewhere else. Having finally fallen asleep at around 3 am we were woken once again at 5.30 when the morning prayers at the mosque started… Ah well, what’s an uncomfortable night compared to an amazing experience like this?
At 7 am I got out and took a quick cold water shower. We had some breakfast (home made donuts and something which looked like, but didn’t taste like, croissants) and got into the boat which took us back to Phang Nga. When we got out of the car which had taken us back to the Sayan Tours travel agency we had 5 minutes to retrieve our backpacks and run to the bus which was about to leave for Krabi.
In Krabi we made reservations for the 2 pm boat to Ko Lanta. This gave us a bit of time to wander through Krabi and have a look at the bus service back to Bangkok. We had a drink at an Italian bar / restaurant and then I left Inge there with the backpacks (it was very warm) to have a look at the bus services. They leave every day at 4 pm from Krabi to arrive in Bangkok the next morning at 6 am. Prices seemed the same all around, 350 Baht pp after some haggling. I got some business cards so I could call them the next week. We got some souvenirs and a new pair of sunglasses as I had stepped on mine…
When we boarded the boat our backpacks were thrown on a big pile. In the end there were probably 100 backpacks on the pile. As we were constantly approached by Thai men trying to get us to book their hotel (most showed old pictures of how the places once looked) it went outside and sat for most of the trip on the to of the boat. After 2 hours we reached Ko Lanta in the middle of a tropical rain flood. When I climbed the stairs before exiting the boat I slipped on the wet step. A large piece of my left shin was now turning very red suddenly. Luckily we had some antiseptic bandages which helped stop the bleeding.
As there is no public transport on Ko Lanta we found somebody who was picking up people for the Miami bungalows (AKA Lanta Miami) and he took us there. The bungalows looked clean and were quite large. When we told them we didn’t want air conditioning they first tried to put us in a bungalow with only one opening window. We managed to get another one which had 2 windows on opposing sides and agreed on a price is 300 Baht ( 7.5 Euro) a night.
Our bungalow was 4th from the beach and was about 25 square meter in size.
