Having eaten a rather large breakfast (the Scot likes to get his money’s worth) , we got a van to Koh Lanta. It took about 2 hours with the shortest ferry crossing ever and we arrived at the Papillon Bungalows to find that it was opposite a building site with a jack hammer so first impressions weren’t great. It did, however, have a lovely little pool and was a 2 minute walk to a long, empty beach. We had a wander and then watched the first of several beautiful sunsets with a beer. We ate several times at the little beach restaurant nearby. Sadly, the bar only seemed to have sold about 10 beers for the whole night and the restaurant only had about 3 sets of customers which was what continued to happen the whole time we were there. It is really hard to see how on earth these people are making a living.

We hired a bike for the time we were here and headed to see just a few places each day. We did some beach hopping until the sand got too much and went to Koh Lanta old town which was just lovely: all old wooden buildings built on stilts over the water. We also visited another national park which had a walk through the rainforest and the most gorgeous beach. We did both have a little snooze on that one only to be woken by a huge gust getting completely sand blasted- the weather changes so quickly from blue sky to storm especially when you’re asleep. We had to dash for our bike and hope we got to a restaurant before the storm hit us. There was a nice owner stood in front of the first one waving people in- he must have prayed for the afternoon storms as his place was quite full of people dodging the rain.

As Callum was missing the 6 Nations rugby trip with the lads, we tried to find a bar showing it but the only bar we could find had closed during covid. In order for him to get some sport, we decided to go to the local muay thai boxing. It was very close by and staff at the bungalows were very enthusiastic about taking us (he also got us in for a local price). There were 4 fights and a fire show. We had been impressed by an 8 year old doing a fire show over dinner a few nights earlier – quite a different style of parenting here. It started with youngsters and then culminated in a Swiss man who seemed very “confident” against a Thai. The ref was very on it and stopped 2 fights which we were impressed with and I think that was the reason we actually really enjoyed it as it felt safe. It was also really interesting to spot the those men who were quite obviously sex tourists. They were quite easy to spot and it did make us laugh when one of these men was left by the Thai woman. His face when she didn’t return was a picture. Just desserts and all that!

The hotel and lots of the places around were doing quite a lot of work getting the buildings and grounds back to a good condition as nature had taken over in some places. The animals were certainly a feature here as the monkeys were very visible wherever we drove. We passed lots of troops of monkeys crossing roads or sitting on tourists bikes and the cicadas took it to a whole different level so it was hard to hear each other at times (Callum might have thought that a blessing after 4 weeks!) Even at dinner, lizards ran over our feet on the beach and, on the way to eat, we saw a huge python lying happily on the track. We were convinced it was dead after seeing it in the same place and position for several days until Callum decided to annoy it with the torch and it moved. We moved quickly too!