Ko Lanta, Thailand
We chose Ko Lanta as our place to spend the holidays based on our hotel host’s recommendation back in Ao Nang. She told us to expect a very laid-back vibe, little in the way of night-life, and some of the best beaches in the area. Sounded good to us. Ko Lanta is one the many islands just off the Krabi peninsula and we took a mini-bus from Krabi Town to Ko Lanta via a vehicle ferry.
Lanta has a series of villages and beaches primarily on on the west side of the island with a road that runs the perimeter as shown on the wall of the bike rental shop above. We spent two weeks here staying at different villages along the way. Most folks use scooters or the scooter-based taxis to move around. We had incredible weather during our stay. Very hot, but great beach weather.
Typical fuel station on Lanta selling by the bottle
Riding in style. Note the bottle of gasoline in the front basket.
Simply identified by a road sign that said “Beautiful Beach” on a newly cut dirt road, Zach and I stumbled upon what became our favorite beach one day riding bikes. We all returned here several times over the next couple weeks. The beach has a single shack selling beer and Fanta soda and some of the best Thai fried rice we ever had.
There is not really any diving right on Lanta, but there are several smaller atolls offshore about an hour away by speed boat that have some fantastic diving . We all did a trip to Ko Ha where I dove and Trish and Zach snorkeled. Luckily another family was also diving. They had a boy Zach’s age and Zach was immediately ready for a change of scenery from us.
Our Christmas Day was a bit different than in the past. We took turns going into the 7-11 on Christmas Eve to shop and re-purposed the floating pineapple as our tree. We spent the morning doing FaceTime with family and friends back home as we all fought a bit of homesickness.
We took advantage of the slow time for a bit of school work, a lot of relaxing, and sometimes eating two meals a day at Uncle O’s restaurant. Besides being a great cook, Uncle O would teach us a few words of Thai every day. Let’s just say that he was a very patient teacher.
Sunsets were amazing on the island and everything during the day ultimately revolved around making sure we got back to the beach to watch the sun go down that evening.
At some point, we realized that we had spent nearly all of our 30-day visa time in Krabi and still had the rest of Thailand to go. So after welcoming in the New Year with a celebration on the beach, we headed back to the Krabi mainland to extend our visas and start planning to get to northern Thailand. It was very tough to leave Ko Lanta, but we were looking forward to the next adventure.
