A couple of hours on a ferry took us across the Andaman sea and to the island of Koh Lanta. A short tuk tuk drive took us half way south down the island where we had booked for 2 nights. The hotel was nice, new and modern and fine for the 2 nights while we explored the area and found somewhere on the beach to stay. We discovered a lovely guest house on the beach with little wooden bungalows, a lovely cool garden where we could have breakfast looking out over the sea and most welcome - a pool where we could cool off during the heat of the middle of the day!
Again we hired scooters and trundled around exploring the island. It is a lovely quiet island with enough tourists to keep the various guest houses and restaurants occupied but not too many that you lose the feeling that you are in Thailand. There are no big chains here and all the restaurants are owner run with excellent food, friendly people and lovely atmosphere. The island is a relatively new tourist destination and has only had mains electricity for about ten years! It is much quieter than the party islands of phi phi and Phuket and great for families and those wanting a nice quiet beach holiday. We loved the island and our time there.
The little bars and restaurants on the beach were cool places to just hang out and chill and the beaches are white soft sand, water which is as warm as a bath and they run all the way from the north to the south of the island so there are hardly any people on the beach wherever you go.
We decided once we had found Nice and Easy guest house that we would stay on the island a few extra days and changed our onward travel plans. We had intended to travel by bus and trains down Thailand, through Malaysia to Kuala Lumpar and then onward to Singapore for our flight home. Instead we booked in for a few extra nights on the beach and bought a flight to Singapore from the mainland.
Our days were spent hopping on our bikes and just driving where the roads took us, past little villages, a butterfly farm, cute little beach bars, troops of monkeys and just stopping off for a drink or just to have a nosy when we felt like it. Chris even managed to figure out how to use the self service Thai petrol pump!
We went to the old town on the eastern side of the island and saw the village where there is still a community of sea gypsies. We stopped at the butterfly farm where we finally saw how pineapples grow! They also had the most amazing collection of orchid plants growing in old coconut shells.
Another day we headed off to the very southern tip of the island where there is a national park with a lighthouse at the top of a hill. The road to get there was very windy with steep hills to go up and down and proved challenging to both me and my old banger of a scooter but we took it slowly and had a great day. The steep climb up the hill to the lighthouse was well worth the puffing and panting for the amazing view from the top.
On the way back we turned off the main road and found the most amazing little beach bar with deck chairs set out on the sand. This is where we plan to retire to.. Chris is going to grow his hair and learn to make cocktails and pineapple shakes and I am going to make wind chimes out of shells and pieces of coral and lamps out of cassette tapes. Heaven!
Saturday we sadly checked out of our hotel for our short trip back to Krabi, for an overnight stay before we caught our flight to Singapore and start our journey home.
