Riding with the wind

This entry was posted in Adventures Emma Our story of Thailand Thailand on December 1, 2014 by Fredde

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No, we have not begun writing our fantasy trilogy or something like that, we have just rented a pair of motorbikes to get around Ko Lanta 🙂
Finally we didn’t have to set the alarm clock! It was so nice to sleep in even though we got up at around 8. It was an extremely hot day and just walking up to the rental place made us warm and sweaty…

We couldn’t wait until getting on the bike and have some natural air con. Our main purpose of renting the bikes was to see a little of Ko Lanta and especially the Nature Park at the southern tip. Margreet ended up with a cute pink and white motor bike and Fredde got a beautiful orange one to match his camera bag :-).

The bikes were very easy to ride, since they are automatic and all, so we could instead concentrate on riding on the wrong side of the road. Yes, all you Brits out there, it’s WRONG, you should keep right, not left… 😉 Also Margreet thought it was very annoying that you had to manually turn of the turn signal.
We made a fast detour to the diving centre were Margreet signed up for tomorrow’s adventure dive. But soon after we were on our way to explore Ko Lanta! The traffic wasn’t too bad and as long as you watched for big holes in the road it was very pleasant to ride the bikes. We enjoyed it very much and the scenery between the towns was lovely! It’s hard to describe the feeling of freedom you enjoy when riding a motorbike…

We had lunch at a nice little place called Diamond Cliff. Like the name suggests Diamond Cliff was located on the top of a cliff overlooking the whole bay below. It was a truly amazing view and perfect for tropical fruit drinks (don’t worry, they were all virgins…).

The road leading up to the national park was truly amazing. With some slope at 22% and a lot of curves and bends it was a little challenging.

Finally at the park we had to leave our bikes and struggle through a wonderful nature trek up and down to the beach. Before we even started the trek we were dripping of sweat and despite the shade in the jungle it didn’t get any better, quite the opposite actually. They had literally paved the trail but in truth that made it so much worse as it was very slippery at places.

However, after an hour or so we were greeted by an absolute stunning view of the small bay with the lighthouse at the most souther tip.

It was very quiet at the beach and luckily the park had a small cafeteria where we could buy water and soda. We had been quite conservative with our water supply during our trek so now we literally gulped down a bottle of sprite and a bottle of water each.
However, not everything was peace and quiet. There were big signs telling us not to feed the monkeys… and even though the tourists followed these rules to the letter the monkeys were quite good at helping themselves. An old lady lost her ice cream to a mean little fellow just in front of us and another tried to steal everything from Fredde’s underwear to our drinking water. Of course we didn’t carry anything edible but especially one monkey didn’t care about that and was quite consistent on getting into our back packs.

As soon as we could we cooled off in the cold showers and headed to the beach, were the harassment continued… With help of our neighboring sunbathers we could at least get a couple of dips in the water and our clothes could dry a little 🙂

Fredde went up to the light house to get see the view and get off some nice shots.

The way back to the bikes were on an extreme uphill paved road. We managed to dodge a few angry monkeys and made it to our bikes dripping of sweat. Soon we got the natural air con going on the bikes and once again rode through the wonderful countryside.
This time we set our destination to the Old Town and arrived there a little before sunset. It was beautiful, especially on the long pier were you can see the town and the houses on poles and all the surrounding islands.

We ate an OK meal, Fredde’s butterfish was quite good but nothing special. Soon we headed back home and it was actually quite chilly when you drive at night. We had no incidents on the way and we were back at the resort after a little more than an hour.
Since it’s one year ago our beautiful Emma was born we had a beautiful remembrance of her at the beach and we finished it off by releasing a sky lantern which slowly rose and finally became an orange star. It was beautiful and we miss and love you Emma, so very much! Forever in our hearts!!!

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