Day 46, Year 5: Still Here in Ko Lanta
Date: Friday, December 11, 2009
Weather: Anchorage Gusting to15 NE
Latitude: N 07 degrees 29.600 minutes
Longitude: E 099 degrees 04.322 minutes
Location: Ko Lanta SW, Thailand
Thai, Thai, easy, easy, slow, slow . . . That seems to be the life out here on Ko Lanta. And so easy to get into. A person could get used to this and never move on. But tomorrow morning we will motor/sail to the top end of Phi Phi Don to Monkey Beach. The snorkeling there might not be first class, but whatever is under the water, I am ready to see. Then very early the next morning we are going to leave and make a stop at a little rock in the middle of the sea on our way to Ao Chalong on the island of Phuket. Hin Mu Sang, known locally as Shark Point, is a place where harmless Leopard Sharks hang out. You really need to dive to see them, but I am hoping that we might catch a glimpse while snorkeling. There are moorings close to the rock where we can safely tie off Windbird while we explore. And a half mile from Hin Mu Sang is Anemone Reef that is covered with soft corals. We can dinghy there and hold on tight as there is a strong current. But, as with everything we do out here, the stop totally depends on the weather. If it is not calm, we will head on to Ao Chalong where I know life will get very busy, very fast. The provisioning for the long months ahead is started but certainly not done. I’d love to have everything but the fresh food onboard before Christmas. At least I’m making that my goal. We got an email last evening from Tory and Piet Hein of Double Dutch. Home for them is Cape Town, South Africa, and they are almost there. Tory said in the email that we’ll soon be sailing away from Phuket with a “shit load” of food on board. That statement really hit the mark!
We worked on the boat this morning and then picked up Tina and Robert at 11 am and headed to the beach. We tied the dinghy to the very long and very nice floating jetty provided by the Pimalai Resort and then went immediately to seek permission to leave it there. We were met by a security guard who understood no English but acknowledged through hand signals that the boat could be kept on the jetty. But we could not walk through the resort. So it was back to the beach where we headed for the cluster of smaller resorts a little to the north. We ducked through the Why Not? Restaurant and found a 7-11 Convenience Store in the little village where we could buy a Thai Sim card for our cell phone. We got cash in Thai Bhat from the adjacent ATM. Once we got the phones going, we walked up the hill to a little restaurant for lunch. We then walked back down the hill and wove through another little resort to get to the beach. But we found ourselves in a delightful little open-air bar with rice mats that we could relax on while having a mid-day Singha beer. And then another. We then made our way back to the dinghy; Robert, Mark, and I walking and Tina swimming. Mark and I then spent the afternoon downloading information from the internet on our upcoming travels in the Indian Ocean, working on spreadsheets that will help us with our big picture planning of where we need to be when, checked to see exactly which paper charts we have, and read through some of the cruiser website information we downloaded and printed. We spent our time at Rebak with internet doing this same thing for the Red Sea route, so late today Mark took the information we had printed on that route to Robert and Tina. When we get to Phuket we will be in search of Lonely Planets for our new route. We’re not sure we will have internet in the Ao Chalong anchorage so we were trying to get as much done today as we could. We’re doing a bit of catch-up with our late decision, but so far we think we are now on track. We just have to find those Lonely Planets as we never go anywhere without one.
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| 091211 Day 46 Thailand–Ko Lanta On Shore |
