We'd heard good reviews of Ko Lanta from the hundreds of Swedes we've met everywhere and a few of the other rabble in South East Asia and so we gave it a spin. Arriving there late at night and clutching the leaflet of the swank looking bungalows we had booked for a seemingly bargain price, we were immediately disappointed. The tide was out at the beach and so there was about a 50ft stretch of sharp and slippery rocks before the sea could be reached, the bungalows looked decidedly unlike the pictures in the leaflet and our room had a fan that was so high it was completely useless. So a pretty frustrating first hour or so but fear not reader, our heroes' time in Ko Lanta only got better, huzzah! (Im reading a book about Pirates)
We (I) explored the beach we were situated on that night, Ko Lanta was hit hard by the tsunami and so development has taken a slower pace, giving it a nice feelling to the baechfront which has lots of relaxing bars and restaurants along it and is cosiderably cheaper than other islands we've been to. That night we went to Mr Wee's Pizzeria and ate some of the best pizza I think I've ever had.
On our first full day on Lanta we embarked on a tour of 4 of the surrounding islands, rising very early to get a taxi to the boat. In typical Thai style, it wasn't quite straighforward, the boat was not only a tour boat but a taxi boat and so half the pople on it were booked on our tour whilst some were just getting ferried to other islands, leading to a pretty confusing forst hour or so as we wondered what we had paid for. Finally we got going and stopped at Ko Karut for a swim, its was a lot of fun. The fun started when all the Thais and Korean we were with jumped in the water and panicked as half of them realised they couln't swim, we then followed a rope to the entrance of a cave and entered in, each of us holding on to the person in front's lifejacket. We bobbed along through the cave which quickly became pitch black and wondered what the hell we were doing as we had to duck under rocks and swim towards the occasional flash of torch light. Eventually we saw a light and after diving under the submersed entrance came out into a cove which was like something out of Treasur Island, completely surrounded by cliffs yet with a beach and trees., it was really something spectacular to see.
We got back on the boat and went to our lunch stop which was on an island called Ko Somethingorother but was a postcard image of Thai beaches, unbelievably blue water and white sands, after the actually quite nice lunch, we went off for ome snorkelling. The snorkelling was good, hundreds of fish swam around us as the boat man took great delight in throwing the food in the direction of Jen. After 6 or so hours on the boat we were pretty tired, when we came back we went to the pizza place again and stayed up to watch the football which was terrible, on the up side we met a really nice couple from Derry who we spen tthe next day with.
So the next day we got two bikes out and decided to go exploring for a bit, after about half an hour of looking for a place called BAmboo Bay we realised we were on the complete wrong side of the island, fortunately we met the Irish couple who had made the same mistake. After a bit of off roading on a crappy little scooter we found the bay in question, it was on the southern tip of the island and was beautiful and almost deserted. Lovely. On the third night we went back to the pizza place again. We went back to the bar woth the Irish couple and proceeded to say goodbye to Thailand accordingly. Boilk More thumbnails ...
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Ko Lanta Hotels
