Vroom, vroom

My hands are clinched tightly. My nerves are on edge. I’m navigating a motorcycle through mid-day traffic. I look to my right, and see a fellow motorcyclist passing me while smoking. I don’t have a helmet (apparently, no one uses a helmet in Thailand), and my bike doesn’t have a license plate. The brakes are terrible, and the bike is difficult to kickstart. I hired a 110 cc bike for the day. The bike was similar to driving a scooter except it had gears that I had to learn how to shift through. The roads are paved on this island, but littered with potholes. Thais also drive on the right side of the road which made my first motorbike experience in Thailand very interesting. Dan and I are driving to a cave on the southern end of the island. We have been Koh Lanta a couple days now. Our bungalow has hot water, and AC, and we are sleeping comfortably on three separate beds. We settled onto Long Beach, one of the nicest beaches on the island. The tourist scene on Koh Lanta is slightly different than Koh Tao. This island is more family orientated, the average age of typical tourist is higher, and it’s much more laid back than the island we were coming from. We spent two hours spelunking then, headed into one of the villages for lunch. When we stopped in village, Megan, Jamie and Jen were standing outside a coffee shop. We met the trio on Bottle Beach a few weeks ago. It was good coincidence seeing them here. We had lunch with them at a beachside restaurant called Rasta Baby. In Rasta-style fashion, our waiters had dreadlocks and were stoned when they took our orders. I ordered a ham and cheese bagette, and received a ham and chesse fish burger! We made plans to meet up with them for dinner, then headed back to resort to meet up with Harvey. Harvey stayed at the resort most of the day while we played around on our rented motorcycles. Later in the evening, we met up with the girls for dinner, and watched an Irish band from Toronto perform while fireworks lit the water and sand in background.

In the morning, we checked out of our resort, and headed for Koh Phi Phi. When we arrived at the pier, we ignored the usual barrage of Thais trying to offer accomodations, taxi rides, etc. We walked for about 10 minutes before we started to witness the destruction and aftermath of the SE Asia tsumani. I stood in the middle of the dirt path. On my left was a tile floor where five stores once stood, and in front of me a row of tents where some of the locals were now living. Later in the afternoon, we settled into a posh guesthouse equipped with HBO, AC, and hot water. After a quick nap, we ran into Robyn, Megan, Jimmy and Aaron at a convenience store while Harvey was buying a few boxes of Tim Tams. Robyn lives next door to me in Vancouver. We made plans to meet, but I didn’t expect to see all of them til much later. We spent the rest of the night with them enjoying Thai rum mixed with effedrin laced Red-bull.