Koh Lanta - Sat 13/03 to Fri 19/03

Koh Lanta…well our first stop in Thailand was much anticipated and after a day spent on the ferry and in a coach and mini-van we were very eager to finally arrive on Koh Lanta. Malaysia had been such an awesome place to visit and our expectations were pretty high for our first stop in Thailand to be a good one.

Koh Lanta is an island (hence the word ‘Koh’) off the far south west coast of Thailand in the Andaman Sea. It is a only a couple hundred km’s over the border from Malaysia but the difference between the two countries is immediately obvious.

Firstly the Thai’s are way more tourist savvy and the development of the island’s is a lot greater than in Malaysia. The Malaysian people are not too forward when it comes to tourists and they can be relied upon to act honestly and be fair in almost all cases when dealing with tourists. As Thailand is a much greater tourist destination the locals are pretty ruthless when it comes to separating tourists from their dollars. This is borne from a couple of factors, the first being the fact that there is an enormous amount of tourists in Thailand so the locals are pretty much over it. Also the competition amongst tourist service providers is so fierce as it seems almost everyone is a guesthouse operator or travel agent. All this was a bit of a shock at first even though we had both been to Thailand before but after being in sweet innocent Malaysia for a while I guess we just weren’t prepared for it.

Back to Koh Lanta. The island itself was nice enough, not eye-poppingly spectacular but still pretty good. The first night we stayed in a really nice place on a beach called ’Khlong Khong’ (try saying that with a sausage in your mouth!) but the beach was quite rocky (dead coral etc.) at mid to low tide which sucks for swimming so we decided to move on the next day. We ended up at a really cheap place called ’Chillout house’ which was to set us back 200 baht per night (about $6 AUD) for our bungalow. Now we wanted a cheap place but we learnt a valuable lesson from this particular bungalow. There is cheap, and then there is cheap cheap. A cheap place is basic but still quite liveable. A shower, an adequate bed, a toilet (manual flushing of course) and if you’re lucky a couple chairs and even a hammock on your verendah. We learned that these places in Thailand will set you back about 300 baht ($10 AUD) a night and are perfectly fine. Cheap cheap places cost less than this (like our place for the first 3 nights!!) and they tend to have holes in the roof and flooring. They are a magnet for local wildlife, if there’s a dog that is overprotective of it’s territory for instance it will be at the cheap cheap place. If there’s a bar pumping music out all night it’ll be next to the cheap cheap place. If there’s any disenfranchised weirdo’s that have washed out of western society they will be staying at the cheap cheap place. And if there’s any rats wandering around searching for food then they will be looking in your room at the cheap cheap place!! That’s right, dear reader, if you are a dedicated follower of this particular blog then you may remember the fun we had with the rats in our room on Kapas Island in Malaysia (that was a cheap cheap place too). Well here we were again with all maner of wildlife using our room as a top feed and nookie spot, this just wouldn’t do!!

After bidding farewell to the strange owner and his brother we found a new place to stay for 300 baht a night that was run by a lovely lady and had nice, clean bungalows with no rats!! The only bummer was it was only slightly further down the lane than the first place we stayed so we had to keep walking past the other place whenever we wanted to go anywhere other than the beach which was a little weird but who cares right?? Get rid of the rats mate and we could’ve stayed quite happily!

As for the island itself, well, the beach was okay and even though we were there for a week I can’t say a lot of special interest happened. We spent our time in our hammock, at the beach or zipping around the island on a rented scooter. The food has been good but I still think the Malaysian food, with their Chinese and Indian influences trumps the food here. Thailand was a little more expensive than we had anticipated and not as cheap as Malaysia which was a surprise. Koh Lanta was still very busy with lots of Euro’s holidaying there but it had more of a ‘family’ feel than a backpacker one. As I say there was not much of special importance to report here other than chilling at the beach so by the end of the week we we ready to head off to the holy grail of backpacker islands-Koh Phi Phi. This is where ‘The Beach’ (remember Leonardo DiCaprio in this one??) was filmed and it has the kind of heavyweight tourist reputation other holiday spots around the globe can only dream about, so did it live up to it’s considerable hype?? You’ll have to read the next installment to find out. ‘Til then.



Tim chilling in the hammock. Such a hard life we have!



Our bungalow without the rats. It was built like traditional Thai house so the bungalow had a low door frame. We kept banging our heads on the door. We spent most of our days either at the bungalow in the hammock or at the beach.



The beach. Resturants and bars lined the shoreline. We didn't eat at these restarants very much as there were better and cheaper restuarants along the main road.



One of the many beautiful sunsets at Koh Lanta.