Oct 12

Oct 12 Koh Lanta Blues

Resort towns are depressing places. I do not like them. At all. They are depressing for a litany of reasons, but it basically comes down to the following: Any place that subsists entirely off of tourism does not have a strong foundation. Visitors put their money into very specific buckets, and most buckets go unfilled. The resort pool maintenance bucket has much more economic sway than say, the new roof bucket for a local villager’s hut. This of course is not shocking information to anyone. It’s the same everywhere in the world. I just thought it might be different here for some naive reason. Sunsets and tropical beaches come with serious baggage. Just remember behind every great sunset glowing over aquamarine water is a town that looks like it just got hit with a typhoon, filled with people who will likely never know another reality. As a tourist I am tired of trying to reconcile that fact. I honestly don’t know what tourism does in these parts of the world. I guess it supplies jobs, but it sure seems like those jobs don’t pay very well considering where the employees go home to after work. Tourism dollars only exist to build more infrastructure for tourists. Like the monster resort being built right down the road from where we were staying. Local roads are still shit, local houses are still shacks, wild dogs wander aimlessly, babies take showers in the street under hoses, trash piles up in ditches etc… You get it, standard third world things.

We are really excited to depart Koh Lanta onward towards Bangkok. We are city people who thrive off of cultural density. I would trade the worlds most beautiful beach for a bustling city market in a heartbeat. I also enjoy feeling like a visitor to a place, as opposed to it’s economic lifeline.

So all that being said, here’s a bunch of beautiful tropical beach and pool centric photography. All musings on the impact of tourism aside, I did eat some incredible curry, saw some locals fishing off of a rock against a CGI looking sunset (I’m such a sucker), and came face to face with a prehistoric looking lizard. I wouldn’t return to Koh Lanta, but am glad that I went. I would return to Krabi Town though. Krabi Town was rad. Real people live there with jobs and lives that don’t revolve completely around whether or not I decide to book my boat trip with them. Also, Krabi Town has amazing food. And as you may know, thats 90% of why I’m in Asia to begin with.