Day 9 & 10: Luxury at Layana

Brett: We were dreading the 4 hour transfer form our hotel in Patong out to Layana Resort and Spa on Koh Lanta. During the peak season, you can get a scenic speed boat transfer across from the harbour in Phuket right up to the front of the resort - a 2 hour scenic boat trip! Ah well... As we only had 2 nights over there we thought it would be good to get an early 08.00 transfer, so we can get there by lunch time and have the rest of the afternoon. May as well get the transfer over and done with! We turned up to get the transfer from the lobby expecting an old minivan, the kind you get from the airport to the hotel, but no! This was Layana’s own van, spacious, luxurious, high tech with it’s own supplies and DVD’s. Niiice...The drive was long, but the scenery was also amazing. The limestone cliffs that jut out of the ground straight up out of nothing, the same you see when you are out at Phi Phi island.

I started doing the maths...4 hour drive...picked up at 08.00... driver had to leave at 04.00, driving for 8 hours once we get there - woah. “Is he blinking a little slower than normal?” i thought. lol.

The ideal place to fly into if you were going to Layana during the low season would be flying into Krabi airport, which is only a 1 1/2 hour transfer, or in high season - speed boat or water plane transfer.

We had to get onto 2 car barges to get across to Koh Lanta. This could add up to an extra hour to the transfer if you just happen to miss the barges, but they come pretty regularly it seemed. I was told by a local that it is extremely busy during high season, you can be waiting 2 - 3 barges to get on, hence the ideal transfers by speedboat.

Koh Lanta is a sleepy little island with a main town and a few villages around the place. Coming from Patong where you get hassled as soon as you get out of the hotel, i was amazed to see Jaz walk up to a massage place, look through the list and not get “maasssssarrgee for youuuuu...” WTF!

Ok... Layana. wow... WOW! Driving down from the barge through town and past all the old dilapidated houses, stores, cars and boats you must be thinking “Where the hell are we?” But as soon as you turn down the driveway to the hotel, there is a long driveway lined with palm trees and you immediately you think “phheww...this already looks nice”

The Layana is a kid-free hotel (wooohoo!) and is simply a place to go relax, sit by the pool, drink, swim, get massages, drink, swim, drink, eat and drink....perfect!

We got a Garden View Pavilion which was just steps from the pool. The occupancy was only about 25% this time of year, so you pretty much have the place to yourself. It’s excellent! There are 44 Garden View on the property, 3 Ocean Suites and 3 Beach Suites. I had a look at the other categories, and the Ocean Suite would be my next choice - 2 story property with day bed and office on the top floor over looking the pool and ocean - heaven. The property is huge but small at the same time - make sense? It is spread out over such a large piece of land there is so much room to wander around and you don’t feel like you are on top of other people. All they have there is a pool, restaurant, the Linger Longer Spa, dive centre, library, pool side bar, tour desk and a lounge area - as I said not a lot, but on a huge block.

Not to write the Diamond Cliff’s service off...but the staff here were bloody mind readers! You have a confused look on your face like “Where is my fork”? and just like that one of the staff is standing there with a fork! Even at breakfast, i was waiting for my toast to pop up, and one of the girls was there and said she can bring my toast to me. “aaahhh...ok... i can do it myself but...ok”

“Sawadee ka (female greeting) or Sawadee krub (male greeting)” was the reply when you walked past the staff, even the garden staff. So bloody happy all the time! Why wouldn’t you though, working in paradise.

The afternoon we got there, we just plonked ourselves around the pool area. It just happened to finally fine up with some great weather for us. Sunny, hot and not a breath of air. Jaz’s nightmare!!! Bloody sunscreen application time! So by sunset Jaz had finally got ready for the pool (joking) and we just swam, lounged and drank.

Had a swim on the ocean at sunset which was amazing - the sky and water was perfect. The company wasn’t too bad either ;)

At a resort like this, there are a few restaurants in town that you could go to, but in low season about half of them are shut - so you eat in the restaurant on site. We were pleasantly surprised to find that it was pretty cheap! I alway gauge the ‘value for money‘ of a restaurant in Thailand by the price of their Spring Rolls. Any more than 200THB - it's way too pricey. lol. We had some wicked green curry and duck dishes, and a few cocktails and some...as Jaz says "Horse Dervves".


*** More to come...just need to get off our butts and finish it :P **

Day 8: Phi Phi and Ping Pong

Brett: Not sure how we jagged the day we did, but we managed to pick the best day of the week to head out to Phi Phi Island. It was a fairly early pick up from the hotel (8.30am)...which was made even harder with the 2am bedtime! We slugged our way to breakfast and the transfer which already had a few people waiting in it. We picked up a few more people along the way to the harbour who kept us waiting 15 min - pissing us all off. There was an older couple from QLD (Bernie and Allan) who were on our bus and happened to be on the same tour for the day. They were pretty funny and spent a bit of the day chatting to them. The ‘late’ family - who were that kind of “well... who gives a shit we kept you waiting” family, thank god were on another boat for the day. Pheewww...

The water was calm, so we took off and made pretty good time out to the first our stop on an island - i forget the name of. (I would be able to find it, but i’m currently writing this on a vehicle barge in our transfer which is taking us to the Layana Resort and Spa on Koh Lanta. So bear with the vagueness.) The island was only pretty small, and Mr Boy - our guide for the day, said we could walk around it in 15 min. We were out to prove him wrong. We only had 45 minutes on the island, plenty of time to walk and then snorkel, so we took off along the beach. We got distracted along the way, there were heaps of little hermit crabs that kept Jaz amused...could have been for hours - but remember we only had 45 minutes. We got to the end of the first beach, 150mts or so, then looked at the time had realised we had no time to swim. When we got back there were a few people complaning about jellyfish stings, Bernie had to get a bit of treatment when she got on the boat as she got a good whack on the back by one. So maybe the hermit crabs saved the day as Jaz’s track record with jellyfish is a bit grim.

Next stop was a mooring off Phi Phi Don where there were hundreds of these little green and black fish who LOVE banana! Jumping in with mask and snorkel, we broke of bit of banana and the fish swarmed on it like flies on.......you get what i’m saying. We mucked around there for about 30 min before heading onto Phi Phi Don for a buffet lunch.

Jaz: Lunch was good, not spectacular but good, I hoofed into the fried rice and fried chicken (hell I’m not on holiday to lose weight!) After lunch we took a short stroll down the beach. Brett had his trusty camera and was snapping away at the boats on the shore. I was more than happy to find a free chair on the beach, drag it into the shade of some low hanging trees (given we’d managed to leave the sunscreen in the other bag still on the boat) and take in the scenery.

The rest of the day was absolutely fantastic. Brett may elaborate more, but I can’t wait to tell you about the night we had in town! In short, other highlights of our Phi Phi tour included: a short stop on Monkey Beach (we fed them fruit, took lots of pictures and awwwed and aaahhhed over the tiny baby monkeys), more snorkelling with banana crazy fish, an intimate swim at Maya Bay (where they filmed ‘The Beach’), sighting dolphins, cruising the spectacular bays of the islands and lounging in deck chairs eating icecream on the final tiny island before heading back to the marina.

Once we got back to the hotel, it was quick showers before heading to the “Australian Cocktail Night” the hotel way putting on free of charge....

Brett: The Diamond Cliff puts on cocktail nights for the different nationalities so they can get to know each other...great idea. The bad idea was for them to give us free cocktails and a deadline of 7.20pm! I'm not sure if I have ever seen so many green, blue, red, pink, orange cocktails drunk by blokes before, but i think they underestimated the Aussie liver!

Jaz: We caught up with our aussie friends we met at Fantasea (Camille & Co.) and apologised in person for failing to find the place we were supposed to meet them for dinner on Saturday night. It's a long story we haven't yet written about, but basically - 1.5 hours of searching, 3 different tuk-tuks and way too much walking in the wrong direction left us with little choice but to abandon hope of finding the 'Banana Bar' and make our own night. If we get time (aka can be bothered) we'll write more about that day later, but for now, let's get back to Sunday night...

So the Aussie Cocktail night was a great success. The finger food was really good and there were cocktails a plenty, even if they started to get weaker the more we ordered. I ordered 9 and drank 7 (because the other 2 were gross - yes, I actually found cocktails I didn't like), Brett reckons he only had 6 or so. As well as catching up with 'old freinds' (i.e friends that we made on Friday night) we also made new ones. Chris and Emma - the first couple we've met from WA - were from Mandurah and Anna and Paul came from Melbourne.

After the cocktail party we managed to convince everyone to meet up at the Margarita Bar on Bangla Road (the place with the live band we'd loved on Thursday night). Much to our own surprise we ordered even more cocktails. Brett and I even did another 'bucket' which was delicious and probably took my count to 10 or so cocktails for the night! We had a great time drinking more, requesting songs and getting to know eachother. It turned out Paul had missed out on a few days of his holiday because he got to the airport only to find out his passport had expired! Anna had enjoyed some time to herself but was very happy Paul finally made it! Chris and Emma were hilarious, typically Mandurahians - very easy to get along with.

Brett and I had to step out on drinks for a little while to go get our clothes fitted for the final time. They had Brett's suit ready but not my dress. Neither of us were very impressed that it wasn't all done especially considering this was the end of the 4th day since we'd ordered it and were told 4 days would not be a problem. Brett brought out his negotiating skills to great effect, even thought it got a bit heated there for a while, we left with exactly what Brett was demanding. He has his suit, they have our deposit and we'll pay the rest on Wedneday night (when we return to Phuket) and they come to our hotel with my dress. Now, back to the fun...

Camille & Co had decided to turn in for the night which was a shame, but Chris, Emma, Anna and Paul were still going strong when we got back to the bar. By that point the girls were hanging out for a ping pong show, Chris was cringing at the thought of paying 500THB for a soft drink but still keen to see a show and Paul had seen it all before so he was up for anything. They put their trust in me to find a good show and a good deal on drinks and I delivered (Chris now calls me his ginger pimp!) I found a lady that had approched Brett and I a few times before and after bartering on drink prices (Brett: Funny that...i had never seen the lady before in my life, but she knew exactly who Jaz was!), lead everyone to Exotica (the place that I'd nearly been kicked out of for taking a photo on Thursday night!) We all had a great time, I couldn't believe how into it the girls were - Emma lit her own cigarette from one that was sticking out of the Thai girls' you know what! Then later she got the Thai girl to pop out a ping pong ball onto the top of the rose Chris had given her! We were in histerics and the rest of the show girls and the crowd thought it was fantastic!

After a long while we decided we'd done and seen enough, so we left the club to head back to the hotel, only to find ourselves in none other than McDonalds. Chris managed to spill his large coke all over himself and went out to buy himself another shirt while we chowed down our burgers and chips. Emma won the bet on what kind of shirt he'd come back with when he walked back in wearing an Osama Bin Laden face mask and his own coke soaked shirt. Very funny!

Photos in the tuk tuk and more laughs on the way back to our hotel finished up our night. We'd all had such a great time it was sad to say goodbye (especially becuase we were off to another hotel in the morning) but all good things must come to an end. Hopefully we'll get to have another night out with them all on Wednesday before we fly back home...

Day 6 & 7: Fantasea and Lady-Boys

Jaz: Well, we've had quite a cultural experience over these last two days. Yesterday, after spending most of the day inside due to heavy rain, we ventured out to Phuket's famous 'Fantasea'. They've got a mini theme park there where you can buy ridiculously expensive jewellery, try your luck at their side show alley and pat, feed and ride elephants. We wandered around and then had dinner with 4 other Aussies (Camille, Grant, Mel and Archie). The buffet was pretty awesome, but Brett and I had only had lunch at around 430pm, so given it was around 730 when we were due to eat, we weren't very hungry.

After some hilarious conversations it was time to start making our way into the auditorium for the show. Much to my delight there was a BABY TIGER you could hold and feed a bottle to! Of course I was straight in line for that and I paid for photos of us with the tiger (they make you check your camera at the door, so if you want a photo you pay for it). I also paid a bit extra for the show's official dvd and souvenir book - ah why the hell not!?

The show itself was pretty good. A little over zealous with very loud bangs and pyrotechnics, but the trapeze artists were cool, as was the magic trick with the grown tiger (still can't figure out how they got it to appear out of no where) and the other random animals. The dancing was good, but we all got bored with it pretty quickly.

When the show finished it was pissing down with rain so we along with 100s of others got absolutely saturated in our migration back through the park to the buses out the front. I was wearing a dress that was half bikini anyway, so it didn't really bother me, but there were quite a few ticked off tourists that weren't quite so carefree.

Day 5: Bangla Road and Buckets

Brett: Going to have to catch up on a little bit as we haven't had the best internet connection up in our room. But for some strange reason, we have a full signal :) Anywho...weather has been nice as you can see here. Blue sky and not a breath of wind :P

Yesterday we spent most of the day in and around Patong shopping and checking out the place. We went in and got fitted at a tailor to get a suit for myself and a ball dress for Jaz for the Flight Centre Ball.

After spending a heap on resort spa massages, we thought we might try out the cheaper street massage. "wood u wike maaaaasssaarrrgggee??" OK :) There are hundreds of massage store fronts in Patong, if you want something family friendly - you stick to the main streets, if you want something more...ahh...'hands on' you head down the back alleys. We stuck to the main street. It was pretty good actually. We were only going in for the 30 min massage, but they are the BEST 'upsellers', so we said yes to the 60 min :P

In the evening we got ready to head into Bangla Road - (im)famous for lady boys, Go Go Bars and just all round seediness...and yup... it pretty much delivered. I'll try to recall as much as I can from last night, but after a few 'Buckets' and shots...everything started to get a little fuzzy. Let me back track a sec. Whilst we were getting massages, we over head some Aussies rave about 'Marco Polo Restaurant', so armed with our trust map and a poor sense of direction we found it on Soi Post Office a few meters down the road. If you want good, cheap and plenty of food this place is great.

Ok...back to the ping pong shows and she-men (oh...not P.C. Lady Boys...). We hit up a bar on the east end of the street called 'Margaritas' it was full of people and had a live band, a great place to start drinking and get in the mood to see something shoot out, blow out, pop out or puff out of someone. At the bar you can order 2 cocktails in regular/normal sized glasses for 250THB or a bucket for 500THB - guess which we took. 3 minutes later out comes a Donkey Kong sized barrel with 2 straws sticking out the side. Bloooooody hell.

The band was great as well... they played heaps of different stuff from Dire Straits to Metallica (which I requested of course). Jaz will also tell you about the little old lady in the rain with her crash-hat on trying to sell something-a-rather, she had a 'naaawwww widdle old wadie in the wain' moment o.O

Down to the Kangaroo bar where we found a group of Aussie boys happy to ring the bell and buy the bar shots. Stoked when the first came around...pleased when the next came...mixed emotions on the third...bad idea on the fourth (which ended up being a wine glass with 3 shots in it). By this time we were up for a ping pong show.

I let Jaz take the reins on this one. She found a lady with a card detailing all the shows the girls do and the fact it was FREE to get into the bar, but failed to mention that a can of coke would cost you about 500THB - $18AUD. Yah... we were out of there. The next bar was the same but had a 'special' on to get us in there which we took. I think we got the end of the show when we got in there, all we got was the final bits of a lady who won't get lung cancer if she smokes like that. I'm sure Jaz will give you her take on it.

That was our Ping Pong experience for Day 5. Lame. We are heading out tomorrow night with a group we met at the Fantasea Show tonight. Camille, Grant, Brendan and Mel are piss funny. Anyone who would let someone at the Aussie Bar write 'I <3 Cock' on his back will be interesting to go out with! Will keep you posted.

I'm knackered....lights out.