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EASTERN PROMISE
VISITORS THRONG TO KOH LANTA’S WEST COAST FOR SUN, SEA AND SANDCASTLES; VICTOR PAUL BORG GOES AGAINST THE GRAIN AND EXPLORES THE LESS-KNOWN, CULTURALLY RICH EAST
KOH LANTA’S WESTERN COAST REVEALS LONG GLORIOUS beaches, open horizons and family-oriented resorts, but take a 15-minute drive east and a very different destination awaits – and it is enjoying a renaissance.
The eastern seaboard offers a diverse mix of history, culture and nature: 200-year-old Sri Raya; a scattering of Muslim fishermen villages nestling in shallow inlets; a mangrove forest ranging over 1,600 hectares, clamorous with macaque monkeys; and Ban Sang-a U, the original home of the Chao Ley (sea gypsies), Lanta’s first settlers 500 years ago.
When the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) discovered Koh Lanta, they began targeting the historical houses of Sri Raya. But the inhabitants didn’t need any prodding to protect their homes – they’d done this themselves for centuries.
“These old houses hold great sentimental value for us as our ancestral homes, so no one will alter or sell their house,” explains Lertsak Kuluijitrangse, a community leader and scholar. “This is because respect for our ancestors is very important in our culture. My house belongs to all the family, past and present – my children know that, so my house is safe even when I pass away.”
after the 2004 tsunami, the NGOs and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) coalesced under the Community Network for Restoration of Lanta Island (CNRLI) umbrella. Money poured in, lift ing standards of living. The fishermen got new boats, the Chao Ley got new homes, the houses in Sri Raya got sewage treatment tanks, the mangroves were rejuvenated by new transplants, and the Lanta Community Museum opened in Sri Raya in January 2007. Dedicated to the history of the island’s main three communities, museum exhibits include old Chinese furniture and accessories, fishermen paraphernalia, a charcoal-producing kiln and a ceremonial boat that the Chao Ley use for their Loy Rua festival (boat-releasing ceremony).
“Resorts on the western coast now promote Sri Raya as a tourist attraction,” says Duane Lennie, a Canadian who runs a boutique hotel and the island’s best known website. “Tourist traffic is constantly thickening, and this has led to the opening of new restaurants and guesthouses.”
It’s easy to overlook the one-street town of Sri Raya, but look closer and the unique architectural design begins to reveal itself – the walls constructed of wooden planks ridden on each other, the high pitch of the facades, the continuous line of first-floor windows with their four-panelled wooden shutters, the pronounced recessed porticoes on the ground floor. Doorways are flanked by symbolic decorations, especially dedications in Chinese script, and some houses have chequered cut-outs above the doorways, designed to let in light. The wood polish is also different – it’s called Shellac Polish Paint – with a finish reminiscent of wet earth, ranging in colour from dark-brown to red-brown. More peculiar still is the old Chinese temple, bristling with fantastic ancestral icons.
Two hundred years ago, a group of Chinese, hailing from the provinces of Fujian and Hokian, emigrated to Lanta and founded the town.
“My grandfather was one of the original settlers,” recounts Lertsak. “They made charcoal from mangrove trees and traded it in Penang, Singapore and Indonesia. These trade routes also developed through lines of kinship – our forefathers had relatives in the places where they traded, and in some cases, instead of money changing hands through sales, they operated a system of credits. In return for charcoal – and fish to a lesser extent – the inhabitants here received household goods and foodstuffs, especially sugar, salt and vegetables.”
Lertsak’s father eventually specialised in the fishery business. He operated four different types of fishing vessels. And the nets that he and his neighbours used were so big that three of the houses in Sri Raya had their back terraces extended, with a series of trellises erected for the nets to be hung out. That’s when these houses became known as longhouses, and the three longest ones, including Lertsak’s, are almost 100m long from front to back.
“The present houses are almost 60 years old,” says Lertsak. “They were built after the last fire here. I was a boy then, and it was aft ernoon when the entire town burned down. We had to wade out to sea to escape the fire, and aft erwards we went to stay with relatives in Hua Hin until the town was rebuilt.”
The interior of Lertsak’s house is unlike anything I’d seen before. The pattern is confusing – the rooms are like appendages, connected by narrow corridors, and all the while, in the boxed-in space, there is the eerie sound of the waves underneath. No house is open to visitors, unfortunately, but one place where tourists can experience these old interiors is at Lennie’s boutique hotel, Mango House, right next door to Lertsak’s house. The hotel’s guestrooms retain the stark minimalism and dimness that is characteristic of the town’s living houses, an atmosphere that Lennie reinforced with the dark brown wooden polish.
“I wanted to strengthen the smoky feel in the rooms,” he says. “I also tried to keep the rooms simple and functional while avoiding clutter. after all, the prime allure here is the water that goes under the house.”
Water is an omnipresent feature – the slushy sound of the sea becomes more emphatic at night as you slip into bed. Waking up to the same sound, you wonder, for a split second, in what watery wilderness you might be.
Fantasy aside, the town’s houses are built out on the water to catch the breeze. The wind gently gusts in from the sea even on the calmest of days, cooling the rooms to the point where a light cover is needed at night. Lennie’s rooms don’t need air-conditioning.
Sri Raya has another quality that creeps up on visitors who lodge in town. It induces indolence; this is different from conscious idleness: in Sri Raya, the somnolence is part of the atmosphere and gives the town a sense of timelessness. (Many other indolent places are accompanied by poverty and squalor, but Sri Raya’s inhabitants are educated and well-off Chinese businessmen who make their money elsewhere, in Lanta and beyond.)
It’s this quality that is now attracting foreign residents like Susanna Bachman, an American woman who arrived six years ago to teach English. “I fell in love with this place,” Bachman says, “and I have been living here ever since.”
Now Bachman and her husband (a Thai national) run a business called Sun Island Tours. “We take people to places other tour operators don’t cover – these are mostly quieter islands on the eastern side of Lanta – and we also do private tours.”
They run the trips in their longtail boat. Tours could be a day of fishing or island hopping, an overnight camp in an uninhabited island, or simply dropping off guests at Koh Po, a small island fringed by a secluded beach just ten minutes away from Sri Raya.
The town is also a good base for visits to Ban Sang Ga-U, the Chao Ley village of 516 inhabitants situated 15 minutes’ drive south. The Chao Ley are said to have originated in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, hundreds of years ago. They adapted to a life hunkered in house-boats and eventually arrived in Lanta 500 years ago, their first land-based settlement. Even now, they retain a distinct appearance – chubby and muscled bodies, a leathery skin and large brown eyes. Most of the men have curly hair and appear inscrutable and listless; perhaps because, according to Lertsak, they’re still “somewhat untamed and shy of the settled life.”
Their attachment to the sea is evident at the nearby beachside cemetery Plew Hon Saai. Many of the graves, decorated with coloured pennants, are symbolic of seafaring: some of them mimic the shapes of boats and one is topped by a small model of the kind of sail-boat that the Chao Ley lived in many years ago.
CNRLI has put up an explanatory board outside the cemetery. It has also mapped other Chao Ley sacred sites, and there are now plans to construct a Rong-ngeng House and Chao Ley Ethnic Hall at the village.
“That will serve as a place where the Chao Ley can practice their folk singing,” Lertsak explains. “This music is important because the Chao Ley record their cultural history in their songs, so if the music is lost, then the cultural history disappears too. Rong-ngeng, a ritual involving singing and dancing, is still practiced during festivals, especially the boat-releasing ceremony, when a boat is drift ed out to sea to appease the sea spirits. But the teachers of Rong-ngeng are now the elders, and this ritual will die with them unless they pass it down to the younger generations now.”
WHERE TO STAY
The best room at Mango House (tel +66 (0)86 948-6836, www.kolanta.net/southernlantaresort.htm) is the Honeymoon Room, with a bathroom, fridge and terrace set over the sea.
If you prefer to stay on the western coast of the island, one of the best beaches is Phrae Ae – it is the longest strip and still sparsely developed. The best beds can be found at the Layana Resort and Spa (tel +66 (0)75 607100, www.layanaresort.com), which is situated right in the centre of the beach. Its cream-coloured, comfy rooms pack in all the five-star amenities and come with terraces looking over expansive grounds of greenery.
Another escape can be found further south, at the rugged and secluded Ban Kantiang beach, which is home to the Pimalai Resort and Spa (tel +66 (0)75 607999, www.pimalai.com). At the back of the beach are creamy, spacious rooms ensconced by mature trees (apparently, no large tree was felled during construction). Further back, the resort has a cluster of impressively plush Thai-style villas – which have masculine wooden interiors, poster beds, spacious bathrooms, separate living room and kitchens and infinity pools – set on a high slope, affording sweeping views of the Andaman Sea.
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