He says: The last two days have been full of adventure. As mentioned in a previous post, this island is crawling with four legged friends. It turns out that a woman from England decided to do something about it just over a year ago by starting Lanta Animal Welfare, a completely non-profit animal shelter run by volunteer workers and vets who help mend abandoned and injured animals on the island. Yesterday we visited the shelter after seeing an ad in the local newspaper inviting volunteers to help walk their dogs. Bob Barker would be proud of this place, the volunteers are very caring and we were amazed at the love that keeps the shelter running. We took a total of five dogs for a walk, one little guy named Pepsi was wearing a dish on his head because of a wound on his leg and kept forgetting it was on. We were both drenched from the heat, but loved walking the doggies so much we took another set of pups out for a stroll. The shelter has 30 dogs and 40 cats, many of the cats are tiny kittens who purr at the mere sight of a hand ready to pet them. We stuck around and helped feed the cats. There are few things as hilarious as the sound of 30 kittens excited to eat, it sounded like a Jingle Cat mashup. We're planning on returning to the shelter later this week to help out some more.
This morning we set off on a snorkeling excursion to a nearby island, or so we thought. After about an hour in the boat with very choppy seas we were told that we were still 50kms away and that it was too rough to continue. The captain of the boat instead took us to another island which looked like something from the movie The Beach. We saw a ton of bats hanging out far above us and were treated to some great snorkeling. The highlight was definitely on the way back when we saw a few monkeys. We went right up to them and some people were even feeding them fruit. Shauna got some great photos which I'm sure she'll post soon. Tomorrow we're going to rent some scooters and tour Koh Lanta. The fun continues!
-Matt
She says:
I saw two reef sharks today. They were chasing each other around like little puppies. The only other time I snorkeled was with manatees in a river in Florida and the fins and mask took a little getting used to, but there were so many cool things to see. The fish were really friendly and came right up to us. They were beautiful and colorful and it was like swimming in Matt and Sonia's tropical aquarium.
On our journey today, we swapped holiday stories with several of the other couples on the excursion. In talking to couples from LA, Australia and Austria, we learned we'd all been to Bangkok recently and experienced nearly identical scams! Bangkok seems to have become, in recent years, a bit of a tourist trap. It's too bad because I heard so many good things about Bangkok, but the scams leave a bad impression and they're so prevalent.
I was thrilled when we entered a mangrove forest and two monkeys came up to the boat to the treats offered by our Thai tour guides. I've heard that the wild Thai monkeys can be really aggressive, and these guys were forward, but still gentle. I got to feed pineapple to one as the other stuffed his face, chipmunk style with pineapple and watermelon slices. One of my "must do"s in Thailand was "see wild monkeys". Check.
The sun and heat here are intense. Matt and I have both gotten sunburns and he has a particularly bad one in his foot that has turned purple and swollen up into a cankle. It's really cute.

Walking along the beach, we have been visiting with the stray beach dogs, who, all told, seem to live pretty happy lives. We met a three legged dog yesterday who stick by us for a while. He would rum ahead of us and then dive head first into the sand and roll around. He was really sweet and snuggle and I gave him a good long scratch. As I was snuggling him, I noticed an enormous flea jump from his paw to body. I then grabbed hold to the ting lump on his neck, and pulled off a huge flea. It was revolting. Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do to help him, as he wears a collar and clearly belongs to someone and there is no medicine anywhere on the island that can be administered only once.

The Lanta Animal Welfare center was a big highlight of our trip. The awesome staff and super adorable, friendly animals were great to visit with. I am dying to go back for another kitten feeding and to walk handfuls of doggies. It's quite a place. Last year on holidays with our parents, Mike and I hung out at a cat sanctuary in some ancient ruins in Rome. The services that the volunteers, in both of these places provide, despite their own discomfort is inspirational.

When we walked Crusty (who looks like a bear), Dolly and Pepsi through the jungle, we got a great look at ordinary Lanta life. Our rudimentary Thai served us well.

Apparently, the LAW (as the animal centre is called) is well respected around the island and had done an amazing job keeping down the animal population. The majority of the country is Buddhist and don't believe in killing anything, and the island had been overrun with puppies and kittens, many who were very ill. They sterilize animals for free(volunteer vets from all over the world) and take in sick puppies and kitties to raise and hope to find adoptive homes.

There are tons of virtually indistinguishable, from one another, black cats. Many of the other cats get adopted locally, but black cats are seen as bad luck here and, therefore, don't have much of a chance. Most of the other animals have names, but the black cats are known as "black cat with ___collar". It seems heartbreaking, hoe we, the cats at the centre are well cared for and seem to have fun stalking each other in the grads on the front lawn and rolling around together. Since most of them are orphaned, and were so when they were very young, they've developed protective instincts for one another and even clean one another's fur. I didn't think cats were such social animals with one another. They truly were the most friendly kittens we've ever met, crawling all over us and purring like motors. A couple of the little black ones were like pirate parrots and wanted nothing but to perch on our heads and shoulders and nibble a little bit of ear.

The animals on the island are pretty isolated and there has been a lot of inbreeding which has resulted in some genetic mutations Darwin would find interesting. The kittens look like little gremlins with super bulgy eyes and huge ears on narrow little heads. They also have really long back legs and oddly kinked or tightly curled tails. I guess there just isn't a big enough gene pool on this little island. I do understand why they wouldn't want to leave this place though!
-Shauna