Adrian sleeping in the Bangkok Airport.

Adrian and I set out for Thailand, and to spare you the details, let us just say the trip is long and taxing. It involved a dash through Narita, and a night on benches in the Bangkok airport. Forty-eight hours after setting out we were in our private transfer, the Toyota version of a Sprinter van, racing towards The Narima Resort.  Thai driving, at least in our experiences, is very fluid. Tailgating a scooter with a family of 4 plus a TV? Check! Passing with an oncoming gravel truck, 10 scooters split between the shoulders and other miscellaneous traffic? Check! It took a good bit of my race car passenger zen to not stress. Adrian on the other hand…

The Resort

A short 2 hours later we arrived at The Narima, a small ecco resort run like clock work by an older Thai couple. The resort consist of 30ish individual bungalows in three rows, A, B and C. Our bungalow was on the A row, which meant that it had air conditioning and was along the cliff over ocean. The room was very basic, but we did have a nice view from our back porch looking out over the water and of course a hammock, which was one of Adrian’s favorite things. Our porch faced almost exactly west so we had a perfect view of sunset every night.

The restaurant at The Narima was first rate. The staff spoke good English, they served a variety of Thai and western food and they were very accommodating.  Aside from lunch on the dive boat and our meals at cooking school, we ate there without fail. One of our favorite things was their french fries. They looked like just plane old french fries but they were cooked perfectly and were the crispyest french fries I’ve ever had. And of course we ate yellow curry, Pad Thai, Pad See Eew and many other tasty Thai goodies.

The Narima also had a small private beach, which was rocky, but very pleasant in general. There was also a clean swimming pool (somewhat of a rarety from talking to other people staying at other resorts), a jacuzzi and a spa offering massages and the like. I would recommend this resort to anyone without reservation.

Diving

We spent 3 days, 6 dives, diving with The Narima’s dive shop, Scubafish, which turned out to be a first rate operator. They run small boats. None of our trips had more than 12 divers on board, whereas many of the operators used large boats with 30+ divers on them. Can you say MOOOO! Scubafish also kept a good high dive master to diver ratio (we were in groups in the water of no more than 4 people) and were conscious of grouping people on ability and air consumption so our dives were not cut short. All of Adrian and my dives were within 5 minutes of the maximum allowed bottom which was quite nice. My only real regret is that I only had my housed point-and-shoot olympus with no strobe so the pictures aren’t great. In fact, I had the internal flash off most of the time to conserve battery because I left my charger at home.

Aside from one dive on a site that was far to small for the number of boats there, all the dives were excellent. The best dive had to be on Ko Phi Phi at a site called Bida Nai which included a place called Fantasy Reef (aptly named!). We saw 6 or 7 leopard sharks, some swimming and some sleeping, lion fish, scorpion fish, banded sea snakes, amazing coral, frog fish, puffer fish and many other fish. The reef was teaming with life and was also jam packed with hard and soft coral that was relatively undamaged especially considering the number of divers there. It was quite an exceptional dive.

Cooking School

The other main thing we did on Ko Lanta was cooking school. Our first class was a morning class at the Lanta Thai Cookery School and had only 6 people in it. At the Lanta Thai Cookery School the group picks a menu of 4 or 5 dishes from the available set and then makes them. We did most of the prep work from top to bottom starting from fresh ingredients. Some items, like rice sticks, they had presoaked and prepared for us, but we did just about everything else ourselves. We started with tom yam soup, then pad thai, followed by panang curry paste, then panang curry and finally green curry.

Our second class occurred somewhat by accident. We got back from diving very early in the day and decided that we had enjoyed the last class so much, we should do a second class. This time we did the dinner class, which had entirely different menu options. The selection of the menu was somewhat of a battle the second time around. The class was much bigger, 12 people, and there were two factions who wanted distinct things. In the end, thanks to some back room dealing, we got almost exactly the menu we wanted. In any case, it was all in good fun. This time we made chicken or tofu satay, including our own peanut sauce, larb gai, yellow curry (Adrian’s favorite) and mango with sticky rice. And again, we were stuffed at the end.

Around Ko Lanta

Of course, we did have time for things besides diving and cooking. One of our days was used up on an “adventure” tour that included kayaking, seeing monkeys, seeing an ocean cave and some beach time on a more remote small island. The tour wasn’t horrible, but I wouldn’t do it again. It was aimed at people who consider a heart rate over 80 beets per minute racing… Yawn.

We also rented a scooter and explored Ko Lanta, which was more hair raising than the tour by a bit. All week we had been seeing people with road rash and hearing stories of spills, not to mention the way we had seen people drive. In the end, it proved to be a decent (and uneventful) way to explore the island.  We also took a cab into town to buy some souvenirs. There isn’t to much to say about all that. The rest of Ko Lanta, at least the parts we saw, is mostly resorts, bars, restaurants and tourist trap shops. The Narima was probably one of the prettiest spots. We did find a nice harbor with some old long tail boats in it, ran into some monkey’s picking through the garbage and got to look around the marina where Scubafish sails from. I got some shots I’m proud of during those excursions.