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Hi from Koh Lanta!
I spent an entire week on this elongated island just off the coast of Krabi, exploring its beaches, jungles, and night markets.
For the first three days, I was at the beachfront Anda Lanta Resort. The rest of the week I spent at the charming AHA Lanta Cozy Hostel. Just look at the greenery I was surrounded with!
It was a perfect environment to finish my 2024 year report! In this annual overview, I reveal a lot of numbers and background stories of Pipeaway’s articles, including one that someone tried to ban on Google!
If you follow the link, you’ll find out everything about the year’s ups and downs, highlighted blog posts, as well as the classic and social media landscape that followed Pipeaway’s content.
The report also reveals my favorite accommodation and food experiences, as well as my favorite city, and country I visited in 2024. Hint: I am still in it!
People think that extended solo traveling in a foreign country can get quite lonely. I mocked the idea on Anda Lanta’s Sunday grill when the famous breakup song inspired this little video.
I actually get to meet so many extraordinary people on the road, especially in hostels like AHA.
One moment you can speak to a 66-year-old Heidi from Switzerland, who also embraced solo traveling, leaving her son at home, and enjoying the company of a book.
Another mature woman, June from Denmark, travels long-term, always sketching some drawings on her tablet, as illustrations pay the bills.
The next person you meet shakes you up completely; Alexander from Ukraine is not a typical young traveler, coming to Thailand to experience parties, temples, and other attractions. He’s away from home simply because he doesn’t want to die.
It’s a silly paradox, running for your life, and ending up in a country invaded by Russians. That was a huge surprise when I landed in Phuket on the 1st of January. The queues at the passport control were crowded with mainly Russian tourists. They looked so displaced!
It might be prejudices talking through me, but their behavior in the queue fitted the political context. They were constantly invading my personal space as if it were Crimea itself. Really, not so respectful ambassadors of their country.
While Phuket is swarmed by rich Russians looking for some careless suntanning in the tropics, they are not so present in Lanta. But in the same hostel, just next room to Alexander/Sasha, there was a girl from his country’s occupier.
The young woman and young man never talked, discretely avoiding each other. Well, she was also quite busy filming TikTok videos, repeating the same monologues, and opening the same fridge several times, until the take was perfect.
The main logistical problem for the Russian girl was that she had to bring a lot of cash, as Russian credit cards do not work abroad. Alexander’s problem was that he lived in fear his country would block his credit cards, as “his place” should be on the frontline, not on an exotic Thai island. He even had his grandfather’s credit cards with him, just in case.
Being a Russian tourist is not easy today. If I talk to some of them, like the TikTok girl, they never show understanding of the context of how the world sees traveling for fun during one of the bloodiest wars their country leads.
A Finnish couple enjoying one of many pristine Lanta beaches briefly shares their thinking: “Russia doesn’t exist for us anymore.”
For a Russian, it must be hard to confront this harsh mirror abroad. They could be annoyed by political questioning. They could be mad that their Couchsurfing request got rejected. They could get offended by a comment that traveling for fun while your country leads a bloody war sounds like listening to an orchestra’s concert on Titanic.
I wouldn’t like to be in their skin. But crossing borders for fun while simultaneously crossing them for war crimes just doesn’t fit well together.
Have a peaceful week!
Ivan Kralj
Pipeaway.com
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