We woke up this morning in Ko Lanta to sunny, beautiful skies. Eager not to miss them, we popped up, packed our bags, ate breakfast (banana pancakes…yum) and hit the road on our motorbike. This time we headed south on the island, and discovered more little scatterings of restaurants and inns, plus fishing villages. We zipped around the mountains, taking in the spectacular views and the legendary Thai beaches, with blue skies and crystal clear aqua waters.

I am realizing as I am writing this that I never mentioned our awesome motorbike helmets. Mine was decorated with “Lady GaGa” along both sides and was awesomely nerdy. However, the Lady must have had a lot of users over the years, or has endured things I don’t care to think about… Either way, she gave me hives. My entire neck where the chin strap sat, and my forehead where the front of the helmet sat broke out in itchy bumps this morning, and they are currently creeping up to my face. Misery. Since this is my second bout of hives this trip (on my arms in Kanchanaburi due to an over chlorinated pool- that wasn’t as bad!) I am running low on antihistamines. Will definitely need some more Benadryl before the 24 hour trip home tomorrow.

Anyway, we headed back to the hotel and checked out, but left our bags so that we could head to the beach to take in the perfect weather. Damian dropped me off at the beach, and I got the world’s most amazing Thai massage in a hut along the water. For $10 US, I got a one hour long rub down, which would have been spectacular at any time, but even more so after two weeks of trekking, hauling luggage, climbing mountains, riding elephants and then four hours of swimming in the Andaman Sea against a choppy current. It was a relaxing way to start our last day in Thailand.

Meanwhile, Damian took the motorbike out on the open road, where I am certain he tested its speed with only one passenger. Eventually, he returned it to its rightful owner and walked to the beach to meet me.

Incidentially, when we reached the beach, we discovered that it was about 40 feet narrower than yesterday- I know nothing about tides, but this definitely changed the character of the beach! We had to cross a new river just to get to dry sand. But, we found our patch of dry sand, the clouds parted, and we had a few flawless hours of Thai sand and sun. We swam in the clear water, snapped a few photos and darkened our tans (or burns).

We ate another leisurely lunch at our favorite joint, Moon Walk, and soaked up our last few hours of beach vacation.

Then, we headed back to the hotel, caught a cramped minibus back to the Krabi Airport, and headed back (sigh) to Bangkok.