The End of Our Travels

Come out to the beach with us for Part 4, the final part of our four part series detailing our island idyll.

Make yourself comfortable. Pull up a chair.
That inviting view is in front of our bungalow on Koh Lanta, the next stop on our expedition. To get there we took the overnight boat Evan posted a picture of in the last blog. We arrived in Surat Thani at 4:30 in the morning, were taxied to the bus station, and waited there for our 6:00 am bus to Krabi, on the other coast of Thailand. In fact, as is characteristic of all Thailand travel, it wasn't actually a bus, but instead a van. Hardened travellers by this point, we just threw our bag on top of the van with the others, and squished in. We got to Krabi around 8:30, at which point we had to decide what to do: stay in Krabi, see the town, go to a beach nearby, or go to one of the nearby islands. We weren't really in the mood for crowded beaches or small towns, so we decided to go to Koh Lanta, which was about a two hour van ride away. We arrived at Klong Khong beach, grabbed a room in a bungalow, and headed for the water.

Unfortunately, the water was about two feet deep, and the bottom was all rocks. We thought perhaps that it was low tide, but actually it was high tide, and at low tide the beach was all rocks. Still, we did get a little swim in.

Here are a couple more beach pictures:










Other than the beach, the most exciting thing we did on the island was a little spelunking. We figured, it's for tourists, so it must be pretty gentle. I wore flip flops and a dress, which may have been a mistake.

Before we went into the cave we had to wait a little while for a guide to become available. Here are some pictures I took in the meantime. The light was very interesting and misty.







Now, onto the cave. It was pretty amazing, with several rooms and one passageway we literally had to crawl through on our bellies. I was very glad not to be claustrophobic! My dress may have been a little worse for wear though, as you can see here.
Fortunately it all came out in the next wash.

In the cave were some requisite bats.

Some spiders the size of my hand. (Our guide asked us, kindly, if we were 'scary of spiders.' We said no. But I still was glad we didn't have to get too close to any of the ones we saw on the cave walls.)

Some stalactites and stalagmites.


And, this is not from the cave, it's just a little something we found on our pillow one night after we came home from walking on the beach. Makes you feel right at home, doesn't it? Notice how it managed to make its way into the mosquito netting.
Here's a picture of a rubber tree plantation on Koh Lanta, which we passed on our way to the caves.
And a few random trees and bits of green grass for all you winter sufferers to rest your weary eyes upon. That's it for our travels, regular blogs will start up again soon, we promise.