Ko Lanta

Sleeper seat on the night train really is the best way to travel. We arrived on west side of Thailand the next morning well rested and ready to hit the beach. Not even the 3 hour stop over on bus station and then another 2 hours on bus, ferry, bus, ferry and taxi could kill our spirit.

Ko Lanta is one of the bigger islands on the west coast - so we had hundreds of sleeping options. And as always when there is too much choice, we just couldn't decide which beach to go to. Finally we listened to our dive shop's advice and went to the long beach (seems that every island here has one).

What a good decision this was. We landed on the best beach we had so far on this trip. It had it all - nice sand, cocktail bar, fantastic BBQ. And to top it all, we had a fantastic room right on the beach at one of cheapest rates in Thailand (6,5 eur).

While we stayed here we celebrated two holidays. One Thai and one Slovenian. On 11.Nov we celebrated St. Martin - a day when grape juice becomes wine (just another excuse to buy some of the expensive vino). The next day, still a bit groggy we celebrated Loy Kraton. This is a Thai festival where People float little containers with a candle, joss sticks and a coin to thank the river goddess and get rid of their past year's sins. Our float kept coming back to the Beach, but committed to get rid of our sins we swam far our from the beach and pushed the flotilla into open sea and said bye, bye to our sins.

We even managed some diving between all this action. Our dive guide had an amazing eye to find obscure fish species. Add some Leopard sharks to the mix and we really didn't feel like laving. We loved it soooo much that we stayed for 11 days. Again (seems this is happening often in Thailand), it was hard to say good buy to Ko Lanta...

Some more pictures here.

Farewell Bangkok

We just had to stop for another couple of days in Bangkok on the way from Ko Chang (east) to Ko Lanta (west). With all the touristic bits and bobs already covered the last time the plan was to just relax and enjoy (and at Dejan's dismay even to do a bit of shopping).

And as luck would have it there was a big beer festival just outside our hotel. We tried to say no - we really, really did :). And that definitely didn't diminish our good feel about the city! Not even the next morning...

To top things off, after the beer (and dinner) we had some fresh water fish (from river running through Bangkok) at one of the street food stalls. Our expectations where very, very low, but it turned out to be one of the best fresh water fish dishes we have ever eaten (even Dejan agreed on this) - just covered with salt and then BBQ-ed.

After a night like this it was really hard to bid our farewell to Bangkok and head for the west coast. Never were we so sad on our way to the beach... Talking to other travelers we heard that Ko Lanta is the best place to visit (only divers are to follow our advice!) - and this time we even managed to book the overnight tickets on time (well almost too late).

Ko Chang

So, it happened... It is that time in life... We are sleeping in two separate rooms now... The thing is that cabins on the boat were not that big and we opted for luxury. Or not having heat stroke, guess depends how you look at it...

So, Ko Chang was sailing time. We hired a 32foot boat and headed towards the island archipelago on the north-east of Thailand. What we did not expect is that we will be so close to Cambodia. We could see it in the distance after the rain. And there was a lot of it (and we thought Ireland was bad!). We witnessed a proper tropical downpour - about 40 hours of straight rain!

But we had a lot of sunny and windy spells as well. The boat was really great. We sailed her along the white tropical beaches under the palm trees overlooking the blue seas. Really, really beautiful. Well, from the distance anyway. Beeches are usually full of sand-flies (checked with locals and the response was "...it is not too bad this time of the year"; yeah right!) and mosquitoes (we used about the bottle of anti-repellent on our on shore trip).

We did some great sailing (in the end we spend less that half fuel of wheat we were told to expect). If we were heading into the wind, we tacked and tacked and tacked (we left a good bit of our palms' skin on the the halyards and jib sheets). In the end, think we maybe overdid it a bit - were probably more in the racing that cruising mood, but it was a great fun!

In the week we mastered (well, sort of...) anchoring process as well. They do not have moorings, so you just pick a bay and it is your home for the night. Gentle waves (well, not so gentle all the time, we were almost kicked out of our beds as well) and stars on the sky, magic... Not to mention that the water had 30 degrees!

We spend all nights on the boat, sleeping on the deck for a few of them as well. Went on-shore only one day to do a bit diving (well, we just couldn't make it without it). Reefs of Ko Chang are not spectacular, but there is some nice coral. Not the place to plan your diving trip about, thou.

Click here for some more pictures.

Next stop, Bangkok again.