Some cheery apartments in Phra Ae Beach
When it started to drizzle one afternoon in Lanta, we welcomed the rain. It cooled the air a little, and made walking outside more bearable, since we’d just returned our tuktuk to the rental place.
Then it got serious. The sky turned ashen, it began pelting down in earnest, and we took shelter where we could find it. The roads ran orange with clay dirt. Thunder and lightning joined the party. And by the time we made it back home, it was almost dark. There we were stumbling our way through to our hut, only to find the power completely out when we got there.
Rainstorm + electricity outage = our first slightly unnerving experience.
Luckily, the power came on maybe an hour later (partway through the movie we started watching on the laptop). Cue an almost-warm shower and a much more comfortable sleep.
The view from inside our tuktuk. We ran out of gas at one point (the gauge, unsurprisingly, wasn’t working) but fortunately, we puttered to a stop right outside a petrol station. Here, you pay the attendants at the pump!
Out and about at Palm Beach resort – the second place we stayed (a bit of a downgrade from the Nakara Longbeach resort, but still nice).
Over on the east side of the island is Old Lanta town. Check out the low lying fog.
Next stop, Bangkok. Trying to organise this myself online was thoroughly flustering, but Lanta is packed with travel agents who make the whole process pretty painless. And while this might not be the case elsewhere in Thailand, they don’t seem to be out to gouge you – the prices were on par with what I’d seen on the web.
