The World in 100 Words or Less

Day 9: After 2 days on the beach,  Aaron and I had had enough.  It’s a very relaxing place to be, but when you want to be seeing all of the sites and exploring the culture, it falls short of your end goals.  I will say though that Koh Lanta was quite an interesting place.  Unlike most of Thailand which is buddhist, the island was instead inhabited by a fishing community of some 20,000 muslims of malaysian descent.  Our travel agent who booked our trip back up to Bangkok was more than happy to discuss religion and especially the increasingly tense situation in Far South Thailand (in between his puffs of a joint).  The muslim culture at Koh Lanta is, not surprisingly, very different from islam in the States.  It has a distinctively asian feel to it, in which they had adapted many beliefs of their previous reiligions and cultural ideas.  But anyways, I’ll move that segway back over to our trip back up.

SO we get on the little minibus to take us to Krabi, a resort town on the mainland, where we find that the driver is amazingly the most ignorant and idiotic person to ever be born.  As we pick up more people from various other resorts we’re surprised to see that he often doesn’t know where they are, on his own island! Let’s be clear, there really aren’t that many and they all have signs at the main road (the only paved one on the island).  So after an hour and a half of watching him attempting to drive a manual car, talk on the phone, and look at a map, we finally reach the ferry which will take us to the next island where we catch yet another ferry to krabi.  Talk about island hopping.  We finally reach Krabi and stop at what we think is our bus stop.  LIttle do we know that because of the driver’s poor off-roading skills we’ve got a flat tire and he took us to the first bus stop that he could think of.  And we’re already late for our bus!!  The other passengers and I are fuming, everyone needing to go somewhere different, and everyone on a tight schedule.  At this point Naomi, my new friend from Bangkok, pops up into my head.  I remember her telling me about one of the favorite phrasesn of Thai people, “Mai Pen Rai”, roughly translated as “no worries”.  Everything is no worries, and thai time is usually about an hour behind everyone elses watch.  SO there we are, freaking out that we’re getting screwed and will end up having to stay a night in Krabi, paying yet more money, becuase the disorganized bus system will definitely not fit the bill.  And to make matters worse, its raining, so we can’t even have a relaxing day on the beach like the day before.

Out of nowhere, our chariot arrives, a minibus that will take us to Surat Thani, to catch a different bus there.We skeptically board and find out that it’s not so bad after all, accept for the young Aussie girls next to us that wont stop talking on their phones, but they’re tolerable.

day 10: After 16 huors of travel (including having to suffer through “XXX:state of the union” and “The Scorpion King”) and a beutiful ride through rubber tree plantations and palm groves we arrive back at bangkok, tired, smelly, and hungry as usual.  Aaron and I get a room at the place we were staying at the last time in Bangkok and quickly fall fast asleep.  Cheers to the closest thing to home. After some calls home and some good old street food I spent the day lounging around, badly needing a break from the ridiculous journey.

Day 11:

Tags: Travel

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