Day 19 - More of Lanta

Despite being subjected to endless repeats of pop/house/rave (read: junk) music into the early hours of the morning coming from the bowels of the bar connected to our guesthouse; I woke up feeling fairly energized. Today is our last full day on Koh Lanta and I decided to go for an early morning walk along the beach while Phil tried to recover lost sleep. The beach was still. I found myself, once again, incredibly thankful for this journey and all that it is teaching us.

Somehow when we checked into Opium Guesthouse, we managed to negotiate a breakfast and a dinner as part of the package. We were thrilled to be waking up to the first part of that agreement - fruit juice, tea, toast, bacon, scrambled eggs, and fresh fruit salad! What a treat! One of the worst things in Asia so far has been our perpetual search for breakfast. South East Asians traditionally have rice soup or noodles, and our delicate Western depositions just can't keep up! Anyway after stuffing ourselves with food (as all good budget backpackers should do should the opportunity arise) we readied ourselves for a beach day.

We read in the sand, again. No surprise there. Phil and I will be very well versed in popular much-thumbed paperback novels by the time we get to London. I think we've each read about 6 books so far! What would we do without book exchanges??

We chose a nicely shaded spot under one of the many Casuarina trees that line the aptly named 'Long Beach'. Occassionally, when our eyes started to blur the words on the pages of our books, we'd pop into the water and splash around aimlessly.

In the afternoon, we went for a stroll and decided to treat ourselves to something sweet. We stopped in at a cafe and just missed the rain. When it started to come down in bucket loads, we knew we'd have to stay put for awhile. Luckliy, we had our cards with us. Currently, Phil is leading on the Gin Rummy scoreboard. When the rain died down we made a mad dash for our guesthouse and another substantial meal.

Until next time,
Luisa