Khao Lak

There is something hidden on the pictures above. The new tourist center in Thailand, Khao Lak, about one hour by car north of Phuket. Did you find it? :-)
Khao Lak is esentially a 20 km long beach with some river mounds and rocky ridges. Behind the beach there are several simple resorts, settlements and small manufactories, mostly for processing natural rubber. Parallel to the beach runs the highway 4 to Bangkok. This highway is also main street of Kaho Lak, and it is also the ONLY street of Khao Lak. And to solve the question from above: the pictures are showing exactly this highway and the center of the "city". A big contrast to Patong, the large tourist city on Phuket where I stayed in 1998.
Khao Lak is a street village. About 50 houses are distributed along a 4 km stretch of the main road, and half of them have a taylor on the ground floor. Half of the rest house restaurants or bars, and the other half house dive shops or diving schools. There were two telefone booths, one "super market" of the size of a small living room, one shop with books and papers, and some traders with really original DVDs and CDs.
On the other side of the road begins the Kaho lak National Park, the second larges national park in Thailand. With wild animals, about 100 species of snakes (only 17 of them poisonous and only 8 of them deadly) and lots of insects and spiders.
Here some photos of this metropolis:

Similar hidden was our "hotel", the Laguna Beach Resort. It looked like a thai settlement with a very nice open air restaurant and hidden bungalows in a palm tree garden. With the jungle beginning right behind.

Lotus Wing

Restaurant

Bungalows

My bungalow was very nice. High and airy, a fabulous bed, shady under palm trees with really good details. Although equipped with air condition, the large ventilator under the roof was sufficient enough for a nice climate. Here some snapsots from my video camera:

My Bungalow

View from the patio

In the evening I visited the beach, only 100 m away from my bungalow. It was empty, even during the day only about 100 people were on the 4 km long beach of the bay where our hotel was.
There were some reefs in he shallow waters, and even these were teeming with underwarer life. While snorkeling I saw crawfish, fire fish, squids and many other life forms, giving hope for the planned dives.
Along the beach many small restaurants were located, often with only 4-5 tables. Although small they all had excellent dishes with extraordinary small prices. For a really large lunch we had to pay 1,5 to 2 € per person! Including drinks.

Beach restaurants

empty hotel beach

I already mentioned the animal life on land. Once I had to chase a snake out of my bungalow, several gigantic spiders were also a bit annoying, but the real plague were some animals I called "Techno Crickets". They started to "sing" one hour around sunset and sunrise, and made a deafening sound like a machine, a buzz saw cutting stone or 10000 teachers with chalk on blackboards. The noise was so loud that it was impossible to speak, even on small distances. But suddenly, every time 1/2 hour after sunset, they stop. And even that sounds like a machine running down. We never saw "Techno Cricket", but we imagined that they must look like horrible creatures from a H.R.Giger-film.
In Germany they would have gotten no operating permit and would have been shut down by the police a long time ago :-)

Khao Lak - Where is it?