The Land of the Scooter

After the motorcycle misadventures I witnessed in the Philippines I thought I would never get on a motorbike again. My dream of riding round the countryside was dashed in favour of good health and a whole body. I remember that Dr Deb the Brisbane travel doctor told me that there are thousands of motorcycle and scooter related injuries in the Thai islands every year and that there is a tourist medicine clinic on one of the eastern islands whose work is almost solely dedicated to patching up foreigners who crash on the islands. Worse than getting a minor injury is getting into major legal negotiations outside of Australia. In the Philippines we had a police man doing an interesting job as mediator over compensation issues, and he spoke perfect English and seemed to be above board. I dread to think of the experiences people have had in Thailand over similar situations. So after a day of adamantly rejecting the idea of either sharing a bike with Sal or riding independently I realized that if we were going to leave our hotel in Koh Lanta and the immediate tourist village around it we were going to have to hire bikes. If I hadn't already had diarrhea this would have brought it on.

 

We zoomed around the Koh Lanta island for the rest of the day and night, mostly on sealed roads, and then up and down and round and round the hills on dirt roads that were covered with thick (my feet and ankles were buried when I came off) yellow dust. It wasn't sand or dirt – let's call it a weird variety of powdery Thai beach dust that somehow got into the mountains. Without the scooter we would never have made it up to the beautiful rainforest walk that led to the dried up waterfall. It was amazing and well worth the fear of driving on the road with no clue of what I was doing. There were huge rainforest plants and flowers that I have never seen before. I love this place! Bat caves and a clear creek with big brightly coloured rocks underneath the water. Huge weird bugs, scurrying spiders and once again, rumours of the Mouse Deer that I still have not laid eyes on. One day I will. Hilariously there was an information billboard about my friend the mouse deer, the information directly cited from Wikipedia. Heheh.

We went through a plantation of amazing sap trees that had red and orange deciduous leaves, through farms and over roads that had so many potholes that someone had gone to the trouble of putting old bike tyres over each one. What I thought was someone's idea of a joke obstacle course probably saved me a grazed knee!
 

Other Koh Lanta highlights included eating three meals a day at the groovy Drunken Sailor café (the food was good but the hammocks were better) and swimming at night watching rainbow lanterns reflecting on the water and listening to classic chilled out music at 'the worst beach on the island'. The water was so beautiful and gentle and my feet received a fantastic pedicure from the gritty sand. Writing this makes me want to go back, but there are so many places still to visit.