We manage, today, to arrive at the Old Town Community Museum while it is actually open. Not only that, but there is a man presiding over it, who lets us in, welcomes us and even walks round with us to comment on what we see.
It's a small museum, largely composed of different corners dedicated to the various religions which are connected together in Koh Lanta Old Town. In one corner we see a boat made out of wood which is used in the ceremonial proceedings of the Sea Gypsies. In another is collected together information about the Chinese Buddhist community, and their original work making charcoal for export. Finally, there is a corner devoted to the Muslim community, which includes traditional clothing and carefully treasured religious texts.
It is this unique collection of different cultures living so peacefully together which means Old Town so interesting. In such a tiny community, following such diverse religions and practices (even the Buddhists are split into Chinese and Thai style Buddhism) you might expect some bickering. Perhaps over issues as simple as which area of town should be devoted to which religious sites, or annoyance at the various practices of others, the chanting of the monks for example, or the calls to prayer from the mosque.
Instead our self appointed (and volunteer) guide tells us that there has only ever been one fight in Lanta Old Town. It was between two men, and either both or one were tourists from outside town. I am not even sure it was over religion. The fact that he recalls it so strongly, shaking his head and tutting suggests that it was, and has been for some years, the talk of the town.
Clearly Old Town has it right. Violence rarely makes any sense and even more rarely resolves a conflict. But what is the secret of this peaceful variance? Wars are fought over religious differences, fanatics are born out of them, and, at the very least, there are often rather sniffy attitudes within one religion to another.
I wonder if it is something to do with the reasons by which each community has found itself in this area of the island. B tells me that Koh Lanta has a high proportion of people who wish to escape cultural constraints and accepted norms within popular society on the mainland.
"That's why", she says, "there are so many ladyboys here and why", with a proud smile, "I have found such a lovely boyfriend!"
She goes on to tell us that many of the men here can cook and that it is possible here for women to be strong and to run their own business. It's not unheard of elsewhere, but more prevailant here.
Perhaps in a community full of people who feel themselves to be different to the accepted norm, it is very easy to be tolerant of difference in others.
The answer may lie in shared tragedy, recalling fond memories of wartime solidarity, for example, in Britain. The devastation wreaked on this community by the 2004 tsunami could potentially have assisted in deepening ties to one another as human beings rather than religious philosophies.
But these are just theories.
When I ask our guide, he simply shrugs.
"It has been like this always", he tells me. He's rather confused that I might expect anything else.
Perhaps I am asking the wrong question. If peace and tolerance are natural and make for a happier society, maybe the real question is why it is not more commonplace. Why do people kill others for their varying beliefs? Why is it rational to look down on a group of people purely because their lifestyle is different to yours?
Of course I am dangerously close to endorsing the argument I personally loathe, namely, that religion is the cause of so many wars that there is simply no good that can come of it and nothing to recommend it. If you extracted religion, the argument goes, from human society, war would be extracted with it. Quite apart from the fact that I believe religion itself (and I'm including atheism within this as a set of beliefs) is natural to humans as we seek to assign meaning of some kind or another to our short lives - I suspect that most wars would be fought anyway out of some sense of innate greed or anger and that religion has simply been used for centuries as an excuse to scratch that itch.
People sometimes behave badly and when they do they know it. It feels good to think that our urges are justified and supported by a higher and stronger power.
And of course, (because we are not all warmongers intent on bringing down first judgement on other faiths) there is also the pull of belonging to something. It is nice to say that we are part of a movement with others and even nicer if we can say that this choice is superior to all those other alternatives we didn't pursue and even that it is the only possible answer.
In conversation with A, back in Cambodia, we once discussed the reaction of others to simple but perhaps unorthodox choices we have made as individuals. M and I choose, for example, to be vegetarian or not to have television at home. A chooses not to drink alcohol and to live abroad cheaply in order to pursue her hobbies for a year. We have all encountered people who respond to the choices we have made with anger, defensiveness or resentment and who have assumed that our making of this choice is a judgement on them for making a different one. A suggests that such people are insecure and need to justify furiously their own lifestyles as a result of being dogged by a persistent feeling of inadequacy.
It's a wise observation. But, when it comes down to it, are we not all insecure and plagued with uncertainty? Maybe we are naturally tribal beings and can only see ourselves relative to others. To know our own identity entirely without comparison with others takes wisdom and maturity indeed. I cannot claim to have achieved this.
It is possible, in the light of this thinking, that the reason Koh Lanta Old Town has sustained such a peaceful harmony across its differences, is its very nature as a small community. Perhaps that desperate search for identity is resolved in one's knowledge of oneself as, above all, a member of the town itself.
Each separate group is changing over time, facing the same quandary of retaining its culture against the inevitable tramping of progress as tourism becomes a key new industry. It is, I think, often in periods of change that religious groups become most fervent, striving to hold on to something, facets of which may be facing extinction in the light of the new circumstances. Pressure for change, if acted upon only one of these groups might produce such anxiety and maybe resolve itself in conflict with the others. That old town is a community facing the same challenges together may soften that effect and keep that security, that sense of belonging alive.
Frankly, however, I am not convinced by my own argument here. I suspect that the people of Lanta Old Town have faced challenges before which may have affected only one of these groups and yet they have retained a solid, peaceful coexistence.
I would love to find a neat formula for this and reproduce it everywhere. But I am not sure that these things are simple or replicable.
I can see, too, that this very peaceful coexistence has become a point of pride for the community in Lanta Old Town and that the museum is largely set up to celebrate this, further reinforcing it.
Ultimately we need pride in our membership of the various groups with whom we share value.
But out of that pride come many possibilities.
Some of the bloodiest wars have been caused, partially, by a need for pride in a country resolving itself in a show of force.
In conclusion, it would appear that I have not managed to find the solution for world peace, which is disappointing, but perhaps predictable. Far better minds than mine have spent far longer considering this issue and been unable to find the recipe for such an elixir.
And neither am I suggesting that Koh Lanta Old Town is the only example of such peaceful variance. Life, as they say, is a rich tapestry - and there are many places and instances in which the beautiful and unique threads of it are welcomed and lovingly interweaved.
And perhaps it doesn't matter whether or not we can agree on who, or what, is operating the loom.
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