January 21
Update on our room. We did get upgraded to a new room which is very nice. We are beside the swimming pool with a shady patio, 2 chairs and a small table. Our room has a good air conditioner, which is a must in the climate of heat and humidity here. We have a fridge, kitchen sink, microwave and a few dishes. We have used the kitchen to cut up watermelon and passion fruit. There’s no real way to cook anything significant with just a microwave but that suits us just fine.
We arrived here in Koh Lanta Saturday and it’s now Tuesday. Without a calendar we have lost all track of time. Memories of yesterday are fading fast as we do more nothing each day.
Some observations from yesterday. We ate breakfast about 7:15 am. The table behind us had a Chinese family sitting there. Keep in mind we don’t know if he is from Wuhan, but none the less we understand why diseases spread in China. The guy worked up a huge hunk of phlegm and spit it over the railing. FFS. The same guy uses his hands at the buffet line. More reason to be early to breakfast and carry hand sanitizer.
Yesterday we took our beach umbrella and 2 beach chairs purchased after the umbrella, to the beach. While the umbrella sounds good on paper, it is more like a parachute at the beach. It seems the wind blows in all directions but mostly toward the sun. We even tried tying the umbrella to the chair. The first wind gust brought Mary Poppins to mind. We may just ditch the umbrella unless we have a day with no ocean breeze which doesn’t seem likely. The chairs we bought are very cheap.They’re constructed of steel pipe with black paint. We had to unwrap plastic from every inch of pipe. The chairs were built with pipe that was pre-encased with plastic. Another Chinese invention. It took us 45 minutes of hard sweating to unwrap 2 chairs. Now when we touch the pipe our hands get small pieces of black paint on it. You can’t win with the Chinese. They sell you shit or cough on you, or spit over the railing at breakfast. We are enabling a whole new breed! Did I forget to mention the chairs are held together with rivets, except on 2 spots, there are bolts and nuts. No lock washers, just loose nuts. We also fixed that with my handy skills, nail polish and Lindas’ pliers style tweezers. The chairs work great now.
After a few hours on the beach yesterday we came back to the room about 1 pm and asked at the front desk how to get to Old Town Koh Lanta. Just our luck there were 2 girls from Lithuania by the name of Agla and Justina asking the same thing. We talked with them about sharing a taxi, which was a bit pricey otherwise. We made arrangements to leave at 3:30 pm and return around 8 pm, the round trip by taxi cost a total of 1500 Baht which is $65. CAD.
We arrived in Old Town and went for a beer with Justina and Agla, who we later learned were sisters. We took some pictures at our restaurant where we had a beer. There’s a swing at the end of a pier. After sitting a while we parted ways and went exploring.
We bough some t-shirts for Gary, a coverup / dress for Linda and the best smelling bar of mango soap.
We walked around town, out on the long jetty, took some pictures and finally went for supper around 6 pm. We ate at Pinto Restaurant. It was good, although salty. Gary had his first passion fruit smoothie and it was delicious. Linda had a mango smoothie which wasn’t quite as good as the ones we have been buying at our hotel.
We arrived back at the hotel around 8:30 pm. It was a good evening and we gained some insight on life in Vilnius, Lithuania.