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After a 2 hout boat ride from Phi Phi we arrived at Koh Lanta port. On the boat over there were several hotel/guest house promoters offering a free taxi from the port to their hotel, so we jumped on with one of them for a free ride to town. We weren't too sure on where to head for but we were told that the hotel we were being taken to was in a good area, upon arriving and looking round the resort (which was very nice), we discovered that we were quite stranded with not a lot more around us... apparantly the area to be in was 15 mins up the road on longbeach. We hitch-hiked on a motorbike sidecar upto longbeach and found a bungalow just set back off the beach for 400baht a night, it was perfect as it had a double bed and a single bed in it so we could sneek Amy in easy peezy when she arrived! Long beach is a really nice beach with pure white sand and a really nice calm sea, perfect for bathing and snorkling, so after Amy arrived a couple of hours later we grabbed a couple of beers and sat on the beach and watched the sun go down. The main street on Long Beach isn't touristy at all, its a main road with a 200m scattering of local bars and small resturants and then nothing until you reach the next small town so its really nice and peaceful, also with it being non-touristy, we found some really good and cheap local places to eat! One turned out to be our fave cuz the food was amazing and the meals were 3 for 2! On our last night they gave us a free beer each cuz we'd eaten there so often, and the staff gave us all hugs!!! Our main waiter who was a little camp actually teased the ladyboy bar 'girl' when he hugged me and she came running over for her turn... I think they both fancied me... well they are only human! Haha!
On one of the days we decided to hire a motorbike and side car (a bit like a tuk tuk) so that all three of us could explore the island, so we managed to grab one from a local guy and set off on our way! We had been gone for around 5 mins when Laura said to me "it sounds like its gonna break down", and at that very moment the flippin chain came off leaving us stranded in the middle of the road! I then had to hitch-hike back to where we got it from to get them to come and repair it. By the time I arrived back, Amy had got a bit nervous about going out on another one and decided not to come, so me and Lau got a moped instead and set off around the Island. We had been driving around 20mins and already we were on the opposite side of the Island at Koh Lanta Old town which was like a old country and western shanty town with old wooden buildings on each side of the dusty road, and it was really quiet! We stopped here for a hour or so and had some lunch and got some much needed rest out of the mid day sun... one thing we did notice a lot about Koh Lanta was how extremily hot it is, I mean really hot!! After lunch we headed further south along the ocean road to the most southern tip of the island, the drive down there was amazing, with virtually no traffic, green mountains to one side and the most amazing blue sea to the other side. It only took us about another 30mins slow riding to get down to the bottom going through countryside and a sea gypsy village, then at the bottom is the most amazing nature/eco-complex set into the forest. They have the most amazing boat shaped huts right on the ocean front and tree houses for you to stay in, they also have their own monkey, eagle, chickens, fish, dogs and cats... so as you can imagine Finch was in her element! We sat here for the best part of an hour having a drink looking out at sea before deciding to head back on the bike... it was at this point we discovered we had a flat tyre! So we were now stranded 30mins from the next town with no bike and no phone, we asked the staff to help but they wanted to charge us to take us to the town which we we not prepared to do. Then came our saviour, two local women in a pick up truck had come down to the eco-park for a drink and were just about to leave when they offered to take us all the way back to Long Beach... not only that, but as they had a pick up truck, they let us put the bike on the back too! Some people are just too nice! So we explained our day to the bike woman who swopped our bike for a new one for the following day... 3rd time lucky! The next morning Finch and I set out on trying to find Leonardo Dicaprio's house as he has a place on the island, we asked a few locals who told us which direction to head and off we went! I think we got to th bottom of the drive that leads up the mountains to his gaff, but at the bottom is a small elephant camp with baby elephants, so this then became Laura's distration... playing with the nelly's... by the time we had our fix it was soon time to get the bike back before we got a late charge.
The following day we all decided to do a Thai cookery class as this would be our last chance in Thailand before heading to Malaysia. We got picked up at around 12pm and were taken to our cooking school 15mins away. The cooking school was in a really nice setting, it was like in a big garden with a open sideded, covered cooking area so it was like cooking outdoors. There was another two people in our class and between the five of us we were allowed to choose five dishes off a list of ten, to prepare and cook... so we decided on Tom Yam, Red Curry, Red Curry Paste, Masaman Curry, and Sweet n Sour. For a start we sorted and prepared the ingredients for all five of our dishes into five seperate baskets and then one by one we took them to our individual stoves to cook them! What we cooked we were alowed to eat and what we could'nt eat we were allowed to take home, so in the end as we were so stuffed we each took two curries home for dinner! Mmmmmmmmmm! The class was really good fun and we we're so glad we did it as we learnt a lot, no more Uncle Bens for me when I get home!
All in all we spent around 5 days in Koh Lanta in which we really didn't do a great deal other than relax on the beach, explore the Island, a cooking class and drinking ice cold beer at night but it was perfect and was to be our last week with Amy as from here she was heading to Kuala Lumpa to meet her friend and we were off to Langkawi, a small island in Malaysia... so its goodbye to Amy & Thailand, and hello to Malaysia!! x
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