Suratthani - Ko Lanta

Another safety-conscious driving experience
The train was delayed during the night so instead of arriving around six we rolled into Suratthani around seven thirty. This didn't mean anyone got any extra time in bed. Oh no. The first rays of sunlight and the train guards were forcibly ejecting people from their beds. I'd like to see a little more of the democratic principle in these situations; can't everyone make their own choices? Those who want to sleep, can. Those who don't, can get up. The upside was being treated to great view of dawn breaking, though. A light green chequer-board of fields slightly hazy from a dewy mist, and avenues of palm trees marking the boundaries of the land. I'm in the tropics, I thought, rather obviously.

Ko Lanta is one of the less developed beach islands off the west coast of southern Thailand. To get there involves a journeying by train, bus, minibus and ferry. This in turn means opportunities for commerce for lots of locals. Hence the scrum-like scramble for your business everytime you arrive in a new place. Especially in a half-way sort of town like Suratthani. So how do you choose?

This is the traveller's chance to redistribute some of his not-very-(in absolute terms compared to the locals)-hard-won money. Contribute to a fair and even world for all. Make all those greenhouse emissions that it took to get here a little less shaming. Demonstrate that though our governments and multinationals may be power and profit-driven monstrosities, the average Westerner is an all right sort of bloke and sympathetic with the people of the poorer nations.

We got on the bus with the air-con.

The minibus leg gave us some memorable times. For all the wrong reasons. The roads in southern Thailand are pretty straight. Kilometers of tarmac over the flat landscape with not a single bend. You'd think this would make accidents less likely. Maybe it does, in which case I don't want to think about what the mortality rate would be if there were more turns.

Anyway, the road was a simple one-lane-in-each-direction affair with a kind of dusty track to either side for slower moving vehicles such as bikes and scooters. A car one hundred meters ahead started to indicate right and slowed to a stop in the middle of our lane. An old man was cycling on the track just before the car. Traffic kept passing in the other direction preventing the car from turning. We got to fifty meters, still humming along at seventy.

The car hasn't turned.

Thirty meters. Still no braking. I'm pushing an imaginary brake pedal like I always do with drivers who make me nervous.

The car still doesn't turn.

Ten meters. Seventy miles per hour. Unless this minibus has got some shit-hot technology, braking isn't going to help any longer. Other passengers moments ago in deep slumbers awake knowing something's up. The atmosphere feels electric.

Our driver suddenly apprehends that, just maybe, the car ahead isn't actually going to turn in time and he's the only person who can do anything about it. He slams us hard left into the track and I swear we're going to take out the old man on the bike.

We pass between the stationary car and the old man like a bullet down the barrel of a gun. Milimeters. If I'd rolled down the window and pursed my lips I could've given the old guy a smack on the cheeks we were so close.

And the best bit? The driver veers back onto the road proper and doesn't skip a beat, dragging on his cigarette with all the nonchalence of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

Later, for the last part of the journey on the island we rode on an adapted scooter. Try and imagine two benches jury-rigged onto the back with a kind of roof awning above. I was pretty happy when we could get off and help push the thing when it got stuck in a sandy ditch in the road.

At the resort we walked back and forth down the beach, finally choosing the hotel we'd been dropped off at. I've got a log cabin a stone's throw from the water with a hammock on the veranda. Another Kodak moment.