Opportunity Foundation does not involve itself in politics and does not take sides in issues like the current one, so I will not comment on my feelings about the political issues. I will say that if I needed to get back to Thailand in the next few days for some reason the current political unrest would not have the least influence on my travel plans. The only thing that might bother me is if they shut down the airport there again, but I really think that is not going to happen a second time.

I would avoid the areas of demonstrator activity, however. Unfortunately, one of these near the Chidlom BTS (sky train) station is in a tourist area with some major hotels. The Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and Hyatt Erawan are among them. Other than that there should be no problems for a foreigner in Thailand.

There is no anti American or anti European sentiment that I am aware of. The problem is entirely domestic. I have never heard anyone say they thought foreigners have anything to do with it. Thais are still friendly to foreigners. That has not changed. If you need help out on the street, ask a Thai.

The basic rule in Thailand, Myanmar or any other country is, if you see a political demonstration or some other form of unrest, go the other way. The Japanese news photographer killed recently in Bangkok as well as the one killed a few years ago on the streets of Yangon, Myanmar two weeks before Sue and I arrived in that city were obviously not following this rule.

The first thing was to think of a place unlike Phuket, Samui or Krabi, one that I did not hear about all the time. I used Google maps to show various coastal areas and then entered “hotel” in the “Search Maps” box. The red markers show the hotels and resorts known to Google. In some mainland areas below Ko Lanta I saw just one or two markers. That is too remote for us. The older areas such as Phuket and Krabi have markers everywhere. That is too built up.

Ko Lanta seemed about right, and its being an island should probably contribute a bit of remoteness. The ferry boats still allow my car, which I want since the two islands are 16 km long.

View Larger Map

I checked out several hotels that appeared to be in a good location. Google maps with the satellite view on, or Google Earth could tell me if there was a beach in front of the hotel. I settled on the Blue Bayou hotel near the southern tip of the island. The location was perfect and it was amazingly inexpensive. The few reviews I found were good. I zoomed in with Google Earth to see what the immediate area looked like but could see no buildings anywhere around there. I thought it was probably under the trees.

You can check out the Blue Bayou for yourself, just put your cursor over the red dot at the southern tip of the island.

Later, when trying to get a hotel along the way in Suratthani city I was clicking on hotel markers in the center of the city and getting places that were a beachfront hotels, or places whose text said they were way over on Koh Samui island. I checked out marker after marker that clearly was not where the map indicated. It took several hours of searching and checking to find a few hotels that were actually in that city.

That made me check on the Blue Bayou. I called up and asked if they were on Ko Lanta island. They were not. They were in Krabi city and not at the beach. That explained the great price. I canceled that reservation, started looking again and found and checked the Moonlight Bay resort. Interestingly, the most complete map I found of hotels on Ko Lanta was at their site, a scan of a paper map (click the map symbol at the lower left of their home page).

Google maps still can give you a good overall view of things, and in some cases is accurate. It did get Moonlight Bay resort at the right location, but you need to use one or more independent sites to check these locations. I used agoda, not necessarily the best site, but it had its own map. These maps are based on Google maps, but the independent web sites mark the hotel locations themselves, just as I did on the map in the previous post.

Using the internet is frustrating. Google maps is the only general mapping tool that has any information at all about hotels and other things in this part of the world, so you have to use it. I think many of its locations are derived from people simply entering numeric coordinates incorrectly and not checking their work afterwards. For example the Sevenseas hotel is in the ocean about 20 km southeast of Ko Lanta.

I am relying less on reviews of hotels, especially on sites that sell reservations. Agoda, mentioned above, is an example. Having read their reviews, and then experienced the hotels, it seems they are removing many of the negative reviews, leaving only a token negative reivew or two.

When I look for a specific travel destination or hotel, I often find many general websites that seek to deal with all destinations or hotels have struggled to be higher in the search rankings appear first, obscuring websites actually written for the specific destination or hotel. Some times I must wade through several pages of search results to find a page that contains real information. The unwritten rule for nearly all these sites is not to show the phone number. If they did, I could call and find out information directly, reserve without their unwanted services and perhaps find out the name of the hotel’s own website.

At first appearance these sites seem authoritative. Clicking on them often gets a general page with no reference to the desired information, but instead a request to “enter a description of this destination” or “find a hotel in Thailand” or “be the first to review this hotel” or a sales pitch for their own reservation services. A great example of this is the Virtual Tourist site I hit when looking for Nang Rong information. At this time I see it finally does have one hotel, but the rest is devoid of any content. How they get so high in the rankings (I entered “nang rong, Thailand”) I don’t know.

View Ko Lanta, Thailand in a larger map

This year we will go to the fabled south of Thailand and stay at a beach hotel near an underwater reef national park on the west coast of Ko Lanta island. Ko Lanta is a large island off the Thai west coast just southeast of Phuket. We’ll take three days for a leisurely drive down. There will be two inexpensive trips on public car ferries (20 min and 5 min) to get our car to the large southern island. We have never been south along the “elephant trunk” of Thailand before.

We are booked into the Moonlight Bay Resort which, at nearly $150 per night is a bit pricey by our standards, but gets us a room on the beach with a beach view in a resort that appears to get uniformly top marks in many internet reviews. And it also pays breakfast and for being there during “peak” season. (note entered later: We only stayed one night at Moonlight Bay Resort – I cannot recommend it)
Sue wanted to spend Christmas at a resort, and at many of these southern Thai resorts prices can nearly double just for the week before Christmas. I saw one (not ours) whose price doubled again for the 24th and 25th.

There is an underwater reef park just south of our hotel, and the list of dive shops and dive tour operators operating on the southern island is very long. We hope to do a lot of looking around in the water there.

It is getting harder to find an “undiscovered” resort area in southern Thailand. First it was Phuket, then Koi Samui. Less than ten years ago Krabi was the new relatively unspoiled place. Each of these places started out with bungalows on the beach, then resort hotels. Now there are high rise condominiums, shopping centers and six lane highways to get you there. Ko Lanta does have resorts, a number of which are still under $50 per night if you are not there during Christmas week. There are still a few bungalow places, but no high rises or big shopping centers that I have heard of.

It should be great, although I won’t know until I get there and see for myself. I’ll tell you more when we come back.