Saturday, November 17, 2007
Monday, 10.29: Ko Lanta
Even though I was awake relatively early, I knew that, with her cold, our harrowing travel day had taken even more of a toll on Bri than it had on me, so I let her sleep until she woke up on her own, around 10 a.m. Besides, the day was cloudy and gray, so I wasn’t exactly missing much by not being on the beach. Once she woke up, we headed down to the Bamboo Bay restaurant to get some breakfast. While eating, we decided that, in spite of the overcast skies, we would head to the beach anyway.
As we walked down to the end of the beach that was safe for swimming (the area just outside Bamboo Bay had way too many rocks, even in high tide), we passed by Baan Phu Lae, which looked just as cute in person as it had on the Internet, and we regretted that we hadn’t been able to get in touch with them and had already told our parents we were staying at Bamboo Bay. However, while frolicking in the waves (which were still a little too rough at that point for any quality frolicking, especially considering that we were the only ones on the beach) and walking along the beach, I formulated a plan: Provided that the rooms at Baan Phu Lae were cheap enough (between 300 and 500 baht), one of us could stay there and one could stay at Bamboo Bay. That way, we could not only get the alone time we both desperately needed after spending every moment together for more than a week, but we could also charge our meals to the room at both places. Not to mention, we could also sort of avoid snubbing the Bamboo Bay people, who had been so nice to us the previous night. Bri thought this was an excellent idea, so on our way in for lunch, we stopped by Baan Phu Lae to check out one of their rooms.
As soon as we walked up to the restaurant/lounge area, we could tell that the atmosphere at Baan Phu Lae was more convivial than next door, where we were, as far as we could tell, the only guests. Bri had been feeling weird about being the only people staying at Bamboo Bay, so she decided to take the 500-baht-a-night bungalow at Baan Phu Lae, while I would move into a similarly priced fan room at Bamboo Bay. There was just one problem: Trying to explain the situation to the staff at both resorts, which we had to do many times, given that the staff members seemed to easily outnumber the guests at both places. Before long, I had developed a standard monologue that I could pull out every time I heard the inevitable questions of “Where your friend?” or “Why you not stay here?” It went something like this: “My friend is sick. She snores. [Insert exaggerated snoring impression here, which Bri didn’t seem to find as funny as I did.] I do not like to stay in the same room as her.” If only those particular phrases had been on my conversational Thai learning CDs!
Anyway, after we ate lunch, we explained the situation to the folks at Bamboo Bay, and they agreed to let me move to a fan room further up the hill. They couldn’t show it to me, however, because someone from the resort had taken the key into Krabi to have a copy made. They told me to check back in a little while, so I helped Bri move her stuff over to Baan Phu Lae. I also decided to walk around the grounds of Bamboo Bay a little to see if I’d rather take a 300-baht-a-night bungalow even further up the hill, but after making the trek up to the topmost bungalow and seeing the not-so-great view, I decided the extra 200 baht would be worth it. When I checked back with the reception desk later that afternoon, though, the key still wasn’t back, but they’d gotten someone to open the room for me, so I could at least move my stuff over. By the time I’d moved, showered, indulged in the luxury of taking all of my stuff out of my backpack, and spent a little time taking in the view on the balcony, it was getting close to dinner, for which I’d agreed to meet Bri over at Baan Phu Lae. I still didn’t have the key, and I wasn’t too keen on leaving all of my stuff (especially my camera and iPod) unlocked in my bungalow, so I decided to just lock the door on my way out, figuring that surely the key would have arrived by the time I returned from dinner.
When I got to Baan Phu Lae, Bri was already on the patio enjoying a Thai whiskey and coke, and I wasted no time in ordering a cocktail of my own. For dinner, I had seafood in a panang curry (my go-to curry at Thai restaurants back home), and it was the spiciest dish I’d had so far on the trip—thank God I had a steady supply of Singha beer at my disposal. After we finished eating, we had a few more drinks as the sun set (not that we could really see it behind all the clouds), after which one of the guys from the resort went out to the sand to do a fire-twirling show for the small group of Baan Phu Lae guests that were hanging out. It was pretty cool, but immediately afterward Bri confessed that she couldn’t really get into it because all she could think about was him practicing his fire-twirling routine and berating himself when he got it wrong. I dare say I will never look at a fire-twirling show the same way again. Soon after the show, the fire-twirler himself approached our table with a game of Connect Four and asked if we’d like to play. We played a few games on our own, and just as we were setting the game aside (I’d decided I was ready to head back to Bamboo Bay for bed), he approached us again. I told him I was getting ready to go to bed, but he asked me to play just one more game with him. I gave in, and he warned me before we started that he wasn’t very good. But after he swiftly beat me and then Bri, I was pretty sure we were in the presence of a Connect Four hustler. We were having fun being hustled, but as soon as a cockroach skittered across the patio and got a little too personal with me (as in, crawled under the cushion I was sitting on and looked like it was about to make a break up the leg of my shorts), I decided it was time to call it a night and headed back down the dark beach toward Bamboo Bay.
My first stop was the reception desk—I hoped that both someone would still be there, and that they would have my key. My first wish was granted; the second was not. However, Siyan assured me that he could let me into the room as long as the balcony door was unlocked. I told him it was, and then followed him up the path to my bungalow, where he, using some feat of gymnastics, managed to climb up onto my balcony and open the front door for me. I felt a little uneasy knowing the ease with which someone could break into my bungalow, but at least I wasn’t locked out.
Once I’d gotten settled in my new bed under the mosquito netting, I fell asleep pretty quickly…and stayed asleep until a few hours later when I awoke to a very loud noise. I have no idea what the noise was (I’d never heard it before and haven’t heard it since…well, not since leaving Bamboo Bay, as the noise happened, like clockwork, every night in the middle of the night), but I was pretty sure it was an animal, and I was also pretty sure that it was coming from inside my bungalow. I sat up in my bed with a gasp, terrified at what could possibly be lurking just beyond the safe reaches of my bed. But since turning on the light to investigate would require dislodging the mosquito net, I wasn’t about to remove the only barrier between me and my mysterious invader. Instead, I could only try to quiet my overactive imagination—and the more minutes that ticked by without a recurrence of the noise, I was finally able to drift back to sleep.
Continue to Day 9, Ko Lanta
Even though I was awake relatively early, I knew that, with her cold, our harrowing travel day had taken even more of a toll on Bri than it had on me, so I let her sleep until she woke up on her own, around 10 a.m. Besides, the day was cloudy and gray, so I wasn’t exactly missing much by not being on the beach. Once she woke up, we headed down to the Bamboo Bay restaurant to get some breakfast. While eating, we decided that, in spite of the overcast skies, we would head to the beach anyway.
As we walked down to the end of the beach that was safe for swimming (the area just outside Bamboo Bay had way too many rocks, even in high tide), we passed by Baan Phu Lae, which looked just as cute in person as it had on the Internet, and we regretted that we hadn’t been able to get in touch with them and had already told our parents we were staying at Bamboo Bay. However, while frolicking in the waves (which were still a little too rough at that point for any quality frolicking, especially considering that we were the only ones on the beach) and walking along the beach, I formulated a plan: Provided that the rooms at Baan Phu Lae were cheap enough (between 300 and 500 baht), one of us could stay there and one could stay at Bamboo Bay. That way, we could not only get the alone time we both desperately needed after spending every moment together for more than a week, but we could also charge our meals to the room at both places. Not to mention, we could also sort of avoid snubbing the Bamboo Bay people, who had been so nice to us the previous night. Bri thought this was an excellent idea, so on our way in for lunch, we stopped by Baan Phu Lae to check out one of their rooms.
As soon as we walked up to the restaurant/lounge area, we could tell that the atmosphere at Baan Phu Lae was more convivial than next door, where we were, as far as we could tell, the only guests. Bri had been feeling weird about being the only people staying at Bamboo Bay, so she decided to take the 500-baht-a-night bungalow at Baan Phu Lae, while I would move into a similarly priced fan room at Bamboo Bay. There was just one problem: Trying to explain the situation to the staff at both resorts, which we had to do many times, given that the staff members seemed to easily outnumber the guests at both places. Before long, I had developed a standard monologue that I could pull out every time I heard the inevitable questions of “Where your friend?” or “Why you not stay here?” It went something like this: “My friend is sick. She snores. [Insert exaggerated snoring impression here, which Bri didn’t seem to find as funny as I did.] I do not like to stay in the same room as her.” If only those particular phrases had been on my conversational Thai learning CDs!
Anyway, after we ate lunch, we explained the situation to the folks at Bamboo Bay, and they agreed to let me move to a fan room further up the hill. They couldn’t show it to me, however, because someone from the resort had taken the key into Krabi to have a copy made. They told me to check back in a little while, so I helped Bri move her stuff over to Baan Phu Lae. I also decided to walk around the grounds of Bamboo Bay a little to see if I’d rather take a 300-baht-a-night bungalow even further up the hill, but after making the trek up to the topmost bungalow and seeing the not-so-great view, I decided the extra 200 baht would be worth it. When I checked back with the reception desk later that afternoon, though, the key still wasn’t back, but they’d gotten someone to open the room for me, so I could at least move my stuff over. By the time I’d moved, showered, indulged in the luxury of taking all of my stuff out of my backpack, and spent a little time taking in the view on the balcony, it was getting close to dinner, for which I’d agreed to meet Bri over at Baan Phu Lae. I still didn’t have the key, and I wasn’t too keen on leaving all of my stuff (especially my camera and iPod) unlocked in my bungalow, so I decided to just lock the door on my way out, figuring that surely the key would have arrived by the time I returned from dinner.
When I got to Baan Phu Lae, Bri was already on the patio enjoying a Thai whiskey and coke, and I wasted no time in ordering a cocktail of my own. For dinner, I had seafood in a panang curry (my go-to curry at Thai restaurants back home), and it was the spiciest dish I’d had so far on the trip—thank God I had a steady supply of Singha beer at my disposal. After we finished eating, we had a few more drinks as the sun set (not that we could really see it behind all the clouds), after which one of the guys from the resort went out to the sand to do a fire-twirling show for the small group of Baan Phu Lae guests that were hanging out. It was pretty cool, but immediately afterward Bri confessed that she couldn’t really get into it because all she could think about was him practicing his fire-twirling routine and berating himself when he got it wrong. I dare say I will never look at a fire-twirling show the same way again. Soon after the show, the fire-twirler himself approached our table with a game of Connect Four and asked if we’d like to play. We played a few games on our own, and just as we were setting the game aside (I’d decided I was ready to head back to Bamboo Bay for bed), he approached us again. I told him I was getting ready to go to bed, but he asked me to play just one more game with him. I gave in, and he warned me before we started that he wasn’t very good. But after he swiftly beat me and then Bri, I was pretty sure we were in the presence of a Connect Four hustler. We were having fun being hustled, but as soon as a cockroach skittered across the patio and got a little too personal with me (as in, crawled under the cushion I was sitting on and looked like it was about to make a break up the leg of my shorts), I decided it was time to call it a night and headed back down the dark beach toward Bamboo Bay.
My first stop was the reception desk—I hoped that both someone would still be there, and that they would have my key. My first wish was granted; the second was not. However, Siyan assured me that he could let me into the room as long as the balcony door was unlocked. I told him it was, and then followed him up the path to my bungalow, where he, using some feat of gymnastics, managed to climb up onto my balcony and open the front door for me. I felt a little uneasy knowing the ease with which someone could break into my bungalow, but at least I wasn’t locked out.
Once I’d gotten settled in my new bed under the mosquito netting, I fell asleep pretty quickly…and stayed asleep until a few hours later when I awoke to a very loud noise. I have no idea what the noise was (I’d never heard it before and haven’t heard it since…well, not since leaving Bamboo Bay, as the noise happened, like clockwork, every night in the middle of the night), but I was pretty sure it was an animal, and I was also pretty sure that it was coming from inside my bungalow. I sat up in my bed with a gasp, terrified at what could possibly be lurking just beyond the safe reaches of my bed. But since turning on the light to investigate would require dislodging the mosquito net, I wasn’t about to remove the only barrier between me and my mysterious invader. Instead, I could only try to quiet my overactive imagination—and the more minutes that ticked by without a recurrence of the noise, I was finally able to drift back to sleep.
Continue to Day 9, Ko Lanta
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