In Krabi again now! This morning I rode the Chao Phraya ferries up and down the river seeing some tourist stuff and taking photos before catching a taxi with Sarah to the airport. We’re now in a hotel in Krabi City with plans to take a boat to one of the islands tomorrow…

PS - I’ve got a Thai mobile phone number now. Send me a text message! (If you call it will last all of 10 seconds or more likely not work at all because I have about 400 baht of credit). My number is 031373623. I don’t know what the Thailand country code is…

This time around, the Thai Hotel in Krabi ended up being the worst hotel experience I’ve had to date. We opted for a double fan room instead of a double AC room as Brandon and I had done the last time I was there. First, Sarah found a big roach in the bathroom - no big deal, most of the places I’ve been in southern Thailand so far have some roaches. Then we noticed that the bathroom is also home to a few dozen small spiders. Not so bad, but taking a shower was a slight challenge at this point… Then Sarah laid down in her bed and realized that it was crawling with ants. Its pretty hard to be comfortable when you’re lying amongst a colony of ants… We went down to reception and they reacted as if this is completely normal, so we paid the extra baht to upgrade to an AC room, which was far cleaner and featured insect-free beds.
In the morning, we bought a ticket to Ko Phi Phi (I had just been there last week, but it would be a crime if Sarah were to miss Ko Phi Phi Leh) for that afternoon. It was still pretty early so we walked towards the beach and found a longtail driver to take us on a quick tour around Krabi. He took us along the mangrove forest to spot some iguanas, to a large cave and to a fish farm where they raised all sorts of tropical fish.
We went back to town and caught the ferry to Phi Phi where we booked a double room for the night.

Early in the morning we split a longtail ride to Phi Phi Leh with another pair of travelers. The tide was a bit lower than last time so we went around the other side of the island to see a different lagoon after stopping at Maya beach. We made it back to Phi Phi in time to catch the afternoon ferry to Ko Lanta…

Back on Lanta Yai again! At Lanta Family Resort, of course, with Thong and Mr. T :). The two and a half days we spent back here sort of melted together… many people here say the same about their 3-or-4-months-and-counting stay… At one of the bars down the beach there was a 2-day long party with several good bands and many faces I recognized from last week. One of the bands, Islander, will be playing at Lanta Family on the 26th for Thong’s birthday so Sarah and I have planned to be back there in time for it. On the night of the 23rd, Sarah and I were taking photos with a bunch of friends on the sand - jumping around being goofy…

I took my wallet and phone out of my pocket and set them on the sand for a bit. When I went to find them later on, they had dissapeared! I knew it would happen sooner or later. The only important things in my wallet were my bank card (already canceled) and some cash (a couple thousand baht). Not a huge loss. Matt, a friend who works at the bar, is keeping an eye out for me in case it shows up by the time we return there on the 26th…

Thong helped Sarah and I book a ticket to Ko Muk, a very small island south of Ko Lanta, for 8am this morning. We made it to the pier on time and arrived on the island before noon. Ko Muk doesn’t have a pier or dock so the ferry stops near enough for a longtail to come pick up some passengers and bring them to the beach.

We walked around to a couple resorts right on the water to find a place to stay, but the first two we checked were extremely expensive (relative to ko lanta!) at 700 and 1200 baht / night (US$17.50 and US$30). We kept walking inland and found Hadfarang Bunglows who had double rooms for 350 baht / night (about US$8). Also, the restaurant at Hadfarang, JJ’s, was highly recommended by a group of Swedish travelers I met in Krabi last week. We took one of the bungalows and shared it with a variety of lizards, grasshoppers, mosquitos, butterflies, moths, gnats and snails. It sounds bad but was actually pleasant - none of them bothered us and the room had mosquito nets.

Ko Muk has no ATMs, though, and we didn’t anticipate this. Since I had lost my wallet the night before, Sarah and I had only around 2,000 baht between us which needed to cover everything including the 800 baht boat trip back to Ko Lanta. We managed to spend only part of it and still enjoy several great meals including a BBQ feast that night at JJ’s.

During the day, I went for a walk across the island (only a few km’s, the island is pretty small). Outside of the main tourist area (”Charlie beach”) the island is home to a few very poor muslim fishing villages. Several times as I went through the streets kids would point and shout “farang! farang!” or run up to me to practice their english: “Hello! What your name?!” I walked as far as I was allowed - at one point a family came out into the road and told me “no farang allowed here”.

The parts of the island that have electicity only have it for a few hours each day - one period in the morning and again at night. From what I saw, the majority of the island doesn’t get any power at all.

We would have stayed another night if we had been more prepared with money, but we booked our ride back to Lanta and arrived in the afternoon.

Back on Lanta yet again! Instead of going straight back Lanta Family, we dove into the horde of touts at the pier and found a place as far south as possible on Lanta Yai. After a long, extremely uncomfortable ride in the back of a pickup truck we arrived at Sunmoon Resort. All of the double rooms were booked, so they offered us a deal on two single bungalows for 150 baht / night each!

The beach here is beautiful and great for swimming, its a short hike away from a (supposedly) nice waterfall swimming-hole and its even quieter than Khong Klong beach where we were before. Tomorrow we’ll go back to Lanta Family to help them set up for Thong’s birthday party…