Scooters on the island rent for 24h periods, seeing as how people usually want to use them each day they are here. Our bungalow rented them, so we figured we would try and talk them down in price and find them cheaper somewhere else during the day… so after a bit of a chat we took our 150 baht motobikes and took off to explore the island.
One of the first things I wanted to do was check out the caves the island has to offer. Too expensive, we move on, at least it was a cool ride out on a dirt road. Then we happened across an ATV track place. There was a big “NOW OPEN” sign, but no one around, so we ventured down what we thought was the driveway on our scooters to find some one to see how much it might cost.
A few huge hill, a couple deep ruts, and some flags and coloured tires later… it was clear we were on the ATV course. Probably not really meant to be scooter territory. There was no one around to ask any questions, so we just took off.
Eventually we ended up in Ko Lanta’s “old town” which is cool little island “down town” kind of area. We had some shakes in hammocks on a pier (you walk through a kitchen and a laundry room to get to the back patio) and just chilled out there out of the sun for a while. This was on the east side of the island which isn’t really a swimming area, too many rocks, but a great view. Next door was the hammock shop. They were amazing. If you want a hammock, this is the place to get them, but it is a little steep for an impulse purchase. Check them out here if you want.
We had seen billboards advertising a monkey school, and Amy really wanted to see it. When we finally rolled up, it was too expensive, we moved on. Snake show? Too expensive, we moved on. Kayaking? Too expensive, we moved on.
Eventually after getting past two stands of people trying to sell you over priced tours, we found a free entrance to a short nature walk where you could see a bunch of fiddler crabs among the mangrove trees. They were really neat to see, and they would scurry away in waves as you walked down the elevated path. We ended up coming across a small fish farm at the end of the path. There were some really neat fish there, and we ended up having some blue crab. It was so tasty. While we were eating Amy detected a monkey sneaking by in the trees. The lady also offered us some little half day trips at the best prices we had heard, but still very expensive so we moved on.
We circled the island, and hit an internet cafe to look for a new place to stay. After picking on online, we went to check it out and it worked out great. They were called “cozy hut” bungalows, and from the description they sounded a little rough, but they were 400 baht a night, WAY cheaper than anything else we found, and we wanted to find some place cheap so we could maybe save some money to spend on a day trip or something.
After booking a room we scooted back to our bungalows for one last night stay.
Oh, and as it turns out, 150 baht/24h for scooters is a really good deal here. No one else was able to even match it.
