South to the Islands

The journey to the south of Thailand was a long, delayed rail trip through rubber plantations, palm orchards and tropical storms. It started in Ban Pong, also the point where the Burma-Thailand Railway starts, and went south speedily past the mountains on the border with Burma to Surat Thani town. After arriving late we had no chance of leaving the ugly town, despite optimistic attempts by me to find a late bus, and constant nagging by taxi drivers to take us across the country for laughable sums.

After this setback, we decided to cut our losses and head straight for an island retreat to get as long as possible there before having to head to Malaysia. Another day's travelling gets us to Ko Lanta, where we have spent 3 days, the first of which was on the beach. I include a picture of our bamboo house by the sea, and some tropical scenes. The island is in the Andaman sea, and seems mostly inhabited by brown Muslim Thais, and red peeling Swedes (and some other europeans, but swedes love it here). We either get woken in the morning by a muezzin, or at night by music from the beach bar.

Yesterday we went touring the island on a moped, and visited the side of the island that hasn't got long sandy beaches, thus has traditional fishing villages, roads with occasional tarmac and mangroves by the sea. This will probably become developed soon though.

The sea life here is incredible, and today we broke the bank and went on a speedboat snorkelling on some islands south of here. Lou became intimately aquainted with the beautiful rocky coral gardens and required lots of iodine and a new pair of shoes to recover. I learnt how to use a pair of flippers and started chasing colourful fish around and picking up shells, thus also need some iodine. We bumped back to Lanta on the speedboat, driven by a Thai wearing an Arsenal shirt - which he assured me was only beacause his boss forced him to.