Roxi decided we should make something of our morning, so we got up early, got a quick breakfast and walked to a different park. On our walk there, we spotted small not lizards and not fish. We had no idea what they were. My best guess was some type of salamander. However, as they were on the quicksand 30ft below, they were very hard to see and photograph. I described them the best I could, zoomed in that iPhone camera all the way, and sent an email to my dad.
Within 30 minutes, I had my answer: mudskippers! Thanks, Dad!
We kept walking until we hit the park. It was a very cute little walking path designed for little children. It had both the Thai and English alphabets and numbers 0-10 in both language. As you looped around the path, there was an animal or statue of something that started with that letter/sound.
We had a blast going around the Thai alphabet looking at the animal, trying to remember the Thai name for it, and then guessing what the character was. For example, there was a monkey. Monkey in Thai is 'ling'. Therefore, we assumed that character was the "L" sound.
Believe it or not, the English alphabet was slightly easier.
At this point we were all hungry and I was hankering after a cup of coffee. We stopped at a little coffee shop where they advertised to handmake all their bread. I couldn't turn that down! I got an English Muffin, butter, and a Thai Style Coffee. It was everthing I wanted and more. A TSC is just 2/3 cold press espresso 1/3 sweetened condensed milk. They're addicting. It's an almost sickly sweet, thick, very strong coffee.
Also the English Muffin was sublime, but let's be perfectly honest about my 16 years of committed and passionate love for coffee...
It's real.
Some people have cancer sticks. Some people have injectable meth.
I have dark, creamy caffeine in the form of bean water.
My name is Genie Thiss and I'm a coffee addict.
Moving forward:
We made it back to the hotel and checked out. Our van showed up promptly on Thai timetables at noon and whisked us and 2 other tourists off to the main bus terminal.
From there, a nice man asked us where on Koh Lanta we were going. When we shrugged and said we didn't know, he got very flustered with us. For the consistent Thai mood of "the plan is no plan", when you actually STATE that your plan is to go with the flow, they lose their minds.
He showed us a spot on the map and said our best bet was to be dropped off by this specific 7-11.
Apparently there were a slew of well-priced hotels and/or moped rentals near there and it was the "locals downtown".
So with this GPS pinpoint in mind, I went back into my bookings.com app and went on the hunt for another hotel.
At this point, we had to make some decisions about how long we wanted to stay in Koh Lanta.
Based on pictures we had seen and how much we all just wanted to chill on a beach, we booked a 3 night stay at the PhongPhiPat Mansion. Soon after the bookings were complete (Roxi opted for her own room which turned out to be the greatest of ideas considering how cheap it was), the new van arrived to take us to Koh Lanta.
Side note: I was today taught by my Thai co-teacher how to say Koh Lanta correctly. It's 'Koh' like you'd expect (rhymes with toe) and then 'Lan' (like Lana Del Rey without the -a Del Rey) TINY PAUSE 'tah' (like in TAH DAH!)
An hour in the van. Then another twenty five minutes of in the van on a ferry across to Koh Lanta.
Then another forty five minutes of dropping people at various resorts before we arrived at our stop.
I hopped out as soon as I could, thankful to be off the bumping and twisting roads. Even the Dramamine wasn't helping at this point. The semi-circular canal was Brown. Dog. Mad.
It was a short, 12 minute walk from the 7-11 to our hotel. Technically we had passed RIGHT by it on the drive, but I was too sick to notice and two other people had been trying to make small talk with me. It was unbearable for multiple reasons. However, they were nice enough: a couple from Canada doing their university "student teaching" via a program in Thailand.
We arrived at our hotel and a very kind looking Thai woman named Noy greeted us outside of the neighboring convenience store. Turns out that her family ran both the small guesthouse and store - and they lived in the back of the store! She showed us to our rooms and took my passport as collateral for a beautiful and almost brand-spankin-new moped. While I was planning to rent the more expensive and higher CC engine bike, she insisted on it when she found out that all three of us would be on one bike. She, along with every other Thai, assumed that 3G1M was a joke.
3 Girls, 1 Moped is never a joke.
For a 3 night stay and 2 days of a moped, it cost myself and Amanda together less than 75USD. Roxi came in at about 67USD for 3 nights and 1 day of moped. Our rooms were identical: main room serving as a bedroom with a nice, queen sized bed. It had a large hanging wardrobe with more hanging space than Amanda and I have in our regular apartment, a desk, two side tables, a couple plastic chairs, and a mini-fridge. It sported both a wall-mounted fan and air conditioning unit. There was a small, 1970s style step down into both the kitchen and the bathroom. The bathroom had a sink, shower, and toilet - and all three of them barely overlapped. Nong Khai royalty only has bathrooms mostly this nice. The kitchen was a 12sqft step down that was literally just a kitchen sink and 1sqft of counter-space. But that was enough for us to do laundry in it for the duration of our stay, saving us a number of "cash money bahts".
At this point, we unpacked and my body betrayed me in the best possible way: I passed out cold.
When I awoke (only because of Amanda's prodding), we found helmets and took off looking for dinner. It was our first 3G1M experience since Nong Khai and I thought there may be a re-adjustment period. Turns out that when you get experience driving in Bangkok rush hour and then you get a bike worth 2 month's salary, muscle memory and shiny toys equal a successful adventure. The hardest part was the main road which more resembled a waffle than a pancake.
We drove and drove until finally Amanda spotted "the place" for dinner.
I will once again remind you that Amanda made all good and reasoned decisions on this trip.
We pulled a sharp U-Turn (legal and encouraged in Thailand) and pulled into Patty's Secret Garden.
We made no mistakes other than maybe the phrase "treat yo self". Admittedly, we only treated ourselves to fancy drinks. Anything other than Thai whiskey and beer run at about the same price you'd pay for it back home. So when I say I got an espresso martini, I mean I paid Winona prices for it. Admittedly, in downtown Winona, I would have paid about 8-10USD for the one drink. In downtown Minneapolis, I'd consider it a steal at 12-15USD. I got it at Patty's for the equivalent of 7USD. And this was a "tourist establishment". Our waitress spoke broken English and everything.
Our bartender was from Scotland!
On top of the espresso martini, over the course of the evening, the ladies and I split:
A drink called an orgasm. It was pretty dang good...
Amaretto Sour
Mudslides (2)
Brandy Espresso
Bruschetta
Prawn, carrot, potato, sweet potato, garlic and basil yellow curry with rice (in the shape of a heart)
Veggie Pad Thai
Banana toffee/ice cream/cashew dessert
In total that was 6 drinks, an appetizer, two entrees, and a huge dessert coming in at a whopping 2000B. That's 66USD. For Thailand, that's an absurd amount of money, but we are on a "treat yo self" vacation so long as we still have cash in our wallets and we aren't planning on continuing to drink like this.
And it was delicious.
To add, there was an ... interesting mural that looked like Jimmy Fallon wearing a dress. ... Ok actually it was quite creepy.
We spent almost 3 1/2 hours at PSG. (Don't worry, Mom, there was no booze in my system and I was far more drunk from the amount of sugar in that dessert!) We drove back to the hotel making only the fastest of stops at a 7-11 to grab detergent for some sink-laundry.
We went to bed well-fed, happy, and air conditioned. Our laundry was done and hanging, we were clean, and we were all looking forward to a full day of island exploring come tomorrow.
Amanda's two baht: When we spotted the mudskippers that morning I wanted to call the mudkips...which is a Pokemon. I vaguely remembered something from high school biology about mudskippers but could only remember the mud part. I also wanted to add this photo from the restaurant we went to. They had fun flower lights all over the place.
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