Trip to Thailand, January 2013

Our hotel was very close to the ferry in New Lanta town, and we got in around 3:00 in the afternoon. Though not luxurious, the hotel had a nice pool and even nicer beach just about 50 yards from the rooms, which were nice, nicely designed and classy in their finishes. It was also only about $70 a night, with a serviceable, if not amazing, breakfast buffet included.

We checked in and went quickly down to the pool and from there to the beach, where we spent a fabulous two hours playing in tide pools and climbing around on the rocks on the shore. Silky smooth sand plus interesting beach features—we were happy!

Hotel room and view from balcony.

Samantha loved the room.

Pool and breakfast area/beach entrance.

Back to the room for a quick shower and change, I realized I was a convert to the Thai-style “shower rooms”—bathrooms with a sloped floor and drain, hand-held shower built into the wall, and no door or separate shower stall. When trying to get sand off Marcus, Samantha, and me all at once, this was by far the easiest way—no need to worry if water was escaping the tub, no banged elbows on the walls of a stall shower, no tub edges to catch toes on when getting in or out, etc. After the shower, Marcus sat down on the bed and I turned on a Japanese anime dubbed into Thai and he fell asleep within about a minute. Samantha fell asleep next to him a minute later while nursing. I then had two sleeping kids at 5:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.

The hotel had a dinner show planned and set up outside, right in the garden and deck over the beach area below our windows, so when it started at 7:00 I popped Sam into a sling (still sleeping), locked the room door (Marcus on the bed still sleeping), and ran downstairs to grab a plate of food for myself from the buffet. This was when I discovered that the hotel restaurant was intensely mediocre—it was completely edible, kind of like cheap bad Thai food here, but the worst meal I had my entire trip. In the five minutes I was down there the band started up, playing covers of Billy Joel and the Beatles and other random Western oldies, and the first round of fireworks went off, right over my head, literally, as the hotel seemed to be setting them off from the beach immediately next to us. Sam kept sleeping. When I brought her upstairs, put her back on the bed with Marcus, and ate my dinner, they both remained asleep. I wrote more of my trip journal and used the iPad and WiFi for awhile until I joined them on the bed and dozed until the midnight fireworks woke me up. Both kids kept sleeping.

Pat and George had tried to go to the hotel dinner show, but they found it so unremittingly cheesy that they gave up and went looking for other interesting events up and down the beach. It was definitely a touristy show, for sure, but it was free, and I was happier having had something to eat that night than nothing, so it worked out just fine for me.


Tuesday 1/1, Day 7

We all woke up at 5:30 a.m.—a twelve-hour sleep for the kids, and a reasonable wake-up time for me too. We were at breakfast when it opened. Marcus had some overly humid chocolate cornflake things and a pancake, and Samantha and I had rice and stir-fried chicken. From there we walked straight out onto the beach to try out the sand toys George had bought Marcus the night before. It was a lovely morning on the beach.

One exhausted kid.

Now make that two exhausted kids.

Breakfast.

Gradually, we started to become aware that our resort, and actually our entire island, was improbably popular with Swedes. Sturdy, impassive, stoic, sunburnt, and very blonde, they were everywhere. Also, Swedes DNLB, as Robert would have hissed at me (do not love babies). There were a few random Asian families, one French family with a little girl Amalia’s age and a German family with a boy Marcus’s age and a baby a couple months older than Samantha, and while the kids played together we adults mostly discussed the Swedes in our varying levels of English (good, for the French, to excellent, for the Germans).

When George and Pat came down after their breakfast and joined us, George spearheaded the making of a large elephant with Marcus and Emil (the German boy) as his day laborers. Then there was some sand castle building as Samantha napped and the tide started to come in, and around 11:00 we went back to the room to shower and clean up and drive over to a restaurant up on the mountain road for lunch.

I’m hardly a safety freak, but the 18” gaps between rails on the fence next to our table, a high sheer drop-off below, did worry me. Sam happily sat in the provided “high chair,” thankfully (it really was just a high chair, with no bar or straps, which was fine by her), and then when she was done eating, strolled around the restaurant in the direction of friendly waitstaff anyway as opposed to in the direction of scenery.

Lunch was lovely. A whole steamed squid, sliced into rings, with a dipping sauce; a coconut “shake” (icy blended drink, not creamy); a Thai iced tea; whole fish fried with garlic, a flower stem vegetable dish which George really likes, a tom yum; and an ice cream pop with corn inside it at the end.

Lunch: whole fried fish with garlic, Thai squid.

Enjoying the scenery at lunch.

With Marcus nursing his pink and purple drumstick-style cone (strawberry and taro, as far as I could tell), we drove down the mountain to Old Lanta Town, where we walked around a bit, window-shopped, and drove past houses built entirely on stilts over the water as we headed to the end of the road, where the Sea Gypsies lived. From there, with both kids asleep in the car, we then drove back around inland and skipped the elephant trekking since Marcus was zonked out. At the hotel, Sam waking up cheerfully as we arrived, I put sleeping Marcus on my back to carry him up, and he continued to sleep another two hours on the bed. Eventually I let Sam romp on him to encourage him to gently wake up, and we went back out to drive to dinner at L. Maladee, widely reported to be the best restaurant on the island. It was very close to the hotel, at least, but I vastly preferred our lunch place—tastier, cheaper, friendlier. The Austrian woman owner (her Thai husband was in the kitchen I believe) DNLB either, and she just was generally unfriendly and rushed us quite a bit. There was a huge line of farang waiting when we left. We did eat well—another tom yum, some jumbo prawns to peel, a steamed fish, more of George’s flower stems—but the food at lunch was a bit better and the service much better. The owner snapped at Sam as she happily turned the laminated pages inside a plastic binder menu: “Please give her something better to rip!” Um, whatever. There were cartoons showing on a TV in the back, but I had no idea why the place was so popular. Marcus was sleepy but holding it together well during dinner, and then we went home and straight to bed, with George and Pat heading back out for one more island drive.

Eating ice cream in Old Lanta Town.

Watching a mynah bird who could talk. In Thai, of course.

Some of the sights of the town--pink Goth scooters, and southern-style tuk-tuks.

Shrines to the king and a Buddhist wrapped tree and prayer shrine.

The end of the road, near the Sea Gypsies' camp, and houses built entirely over the water.

--more--

 

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Created: 1/15/13. Last Modified: 1/15/13.