Our first Songkran in Asia was really nice, and we were glad we stayed on Koh Lanta since it wasn’t too crazy busy.  Songkran is the Thai/ Lao new year water festival where everyone throws water on everyone else, everyone walks around with huge water pistols, and generally everyone gets really wet.  It is basically to welcome the rainy season, because by April the continent is ridiculously hot and so the rains coming are usually really appreciated to cool it down a bit.  This year it didn’t quite work that way in the south, since we got heavy rains a couple of weeks ago and the flooding from that is still receeding, but still, any excuse for a party!  The main celebrations are in Bangkok and northern Thailand and Laos, and we were quite glad we stayed in the sleepy south because although it is really fun for the most part, it’s also kind of annoying if you just want to grab something to eat but can’t do so without getting saturated.

The main reason we stayed on Lanta though, was because our friend Melissa who we met on Cat Ba Island in Vietnam told us she was coming to visit.  It was really fun to catch up with her again, and also her friend Heidi who she brought to Lanta.  We spent the evening on the beach watching the sunset and then had an awesome dinner at one of our  favourite restaurants, Sonya Restaurant.

We spent our last few days on Lanta riding around the island, visiting Patu our friend who is starting his cafe at the Old Town next season (and who has a location to die for, on the waters edge overlooking the limestone karst islands), and admiring all of the beautiful trees in flower at the moment.  Now we’re heading north again for more Lao adventures, and to meet Ben and Lauren our friends from Sydney, before that though we’re heading to Pai, in northern Thailand to meet up with Luke who we met on Lanta and check out the mountain town that we didn’t make it to last time we were in northern Thailand.  Apparently it’s chilled out and filled with hippies, so let’s hope it’s all it’s cracked up to be!