Did I mention how bad I felt about the cameras?

January 6th, 2002 at 12:00am

I am in the city of Trang, about 180 km south of Krabi, back on the mainland of Thailand. Somehow I was able to make the break from Ko Lanta. After a late night at the Reggae Bar, I got up at 6am to finish packing, load the bike, and ride the 6 km into town to the pier. Took the 2-hour boat ride to Krabi, picked up my passport, then looked into getting a bus or minivan down to Trang. (The passport by the way says I’ve been to Malaysia and Burma in the past 2 months, conveniently when my Thai visa was due to expire each time – gotta love the corruption going on sometimes, eh?) Anyway I finally settled on taking my chances at the local bus station after I found out the minivan was already full. See, I had to get to Trang today because I’m booked on a flight to Bangkok from here tomorrow. The bus station is 5 km outside of town so I rode over and lucky enough there was a bus getting ready to leave. Only Thais on the bus – I was the only farang. Plenty of room for my bike under the bus due to the lack of backpackers doing the local bus thing. Thank God! It was a smooth ride and the Thais were really helpful in getting my bike on and off the bus and back together again.

So here I am in Trang waiting for some grub and then I plan to get to bed early. My flight tomorrow is at 9:15am so I’ll be up early to pack up and cycle down to the airport. I am really exhausted from the long today and rather stressful day yesterday so I’ll be looking forward to some sleep.

Yesterday was a crazy, crazy day on Lanta indeed, appropriately so for my last day I suppose but I would have preferred a quiet, mellow, stress-free day for sure. It started out at breakfast, when I met this guy Sascha, a fellow traveler from Austria. He was new to Lanta and asking for advice on what to see and where to go. We talked for awhile and then he suggested renting a bike and going cycling around the island with me. It sounded like a lot of effort for someone used to laying in a hammock all day but I said why not it’d be nice to have the company so ok. He rented his bike and I got mine out of my bungalow and we met up on the road to head out. That is when I made my fatal mistake. I had my camera wrapped in a sarong and bungy-ed to the rear rack of my bicycle and Sascha didn’t have anywhere to put his camera so I said no problem I’ll wrap it up with mine.

So we set off towards the caves, cycling and talking along the way. We got to a nice viewpoint about 8 or 9 km’s later and Sascha said he wanted to take a photo. I turned around to get his camera and the sarong was GONE! No cameras, no sarong, no bungy. PANIC!!! Obviously they fell off somewhere but WHERE? I have never cycled so fast in my life as I took off (Sascha said later all he saw was a cloud of dust and I was gone). I tore off and combed every inch of the route all the way back but to no avail. The cameras were long gone, obviously having fallen off on the road and picked up by some lucky passerby. As the Brits say, I was gutted!

When Sascha got back and we both realized they were gone, he went off to Sala Dan to the police station and I went to the local station near Long Beach to report them missing. Poor Sascha! I felt TERRIBLE. He is probably so sorry he ever met me! We kept saying all the cliches to make us feel better, like how it’s a lesson to not rely too much on material possessions and at least they didn’t get stolen somehow that would be worse but I still felt like complete shit.

The only way I saw fit to deal with the situation was to start drinking Sang Sum (rum) and Cokes. Sascha went back to his bungalow for awhile and meantime I found Joe with 2 of his friends, a Greek couple who have been coming to Lanta for 10 years. Avid card players as well. So the four of us threw ourselves into some serious Chinese Poker over rum and Cokes and that got my mind off the horrific events of the day a bit. Joe even had me laughing about it which helped tremendously.

For what reason I do not know Sascha still wanted to have dinner with me at the Sanctuary so I met up with him later and we ate there. Did I mention how bad I felt about the cameras? Man, what a bummer. Anyway we had a nice time and then I ran into Joe again to say goodbye and all that. Sascha and I set out for the Reggae Bar where we ran into Arnold and Ben, 2 French guys from Nice who we had met earlier before dinner. They are staying in the bungalow next to Sascha and were drinking cocktails on the porch and I asked what it was and they said Pastis – an anise-flavored aperitif. Well that is just about my FAVORITE drink in the world I said and before I knew it Sascha and I were drinking cocktails with them for a good hour or so. It was great! Really nice guys and very funny too.

So we met them again after dinner and we all had a very nice time laughing and talking. They all tried to convince me to stay and not leave today. Must admit I was VERY tempted but I remained strong this morning and got out. Besides, I HAVE to go to Bangkok to buy a new camera now. The worst part about it (besides the guilt of losing Sascha’s camera) was that I had a roll of 28 photos in the camera – all gone forever. All my friends made on Lanta, the sunsets, and my precious garden will all just be mental pictures in my mind from now on. It almost brought me to tears this morning but I’m over it now. Onward to Bangkok tomorrow…

Entry Filed under: Koh Lanta,South,Thailand