Southern Thailand: Koh Lanta

It took about two hours to fly from Chiang Mai to Krabi in Southern Thailand. From here, we got a shared van to Koh Lanta, which involved a car ferry took another two hours. It felt like a big travel day.

Koh Lanta is an island off the west coast of Southern Thailand. It’s not far from the Malaysian border and has a big Thai-Malay community - there are mosques and a lot of halal food, which we hadn’t seen much of elsewhere in Thailand. It’s the biggest island in this part of Thailand.

As soon as we touched down, there was a clear temperate shift compared to Northern Thailand - it was HOT and muggy!

Our accommodation was in Long Beach, it was basic but it had air conditioning and was less than 100m from the beach.

Long Beach, as it sounds, is a really long beach - over 3km. It was flat and calm and perfect for beach walks!

The day was capped off with dinner from Mr Pad Thai - a small street food vendor who exclusively sells pad Thai each day (literally until he sells out, which he does). 

We spent several days just enjoying the beach! We found a restaurant that allowed us to use their beach beds, so long as you bought drinks or food. We had breakfast here and then lounged around for most of the day, heading for swims to cool off and reading our books.

We found out that there was actually sea lice (jellyfish larvae) in the water (harmless, but ick), but luckily they had moved on before the next time we headed for a swim or I might’ve got too unnerved! 

We watched the sunset each night - a staple activity on Long Beach, which was stunning! 

On our first night, we also grabbed dinner at a restaurant on the beach (how often do you get to eat dinner with your feet in the sand!?) and caught a free fire show.

The following day we heading of on a ‘4 Islands Tour’ - we boarded a long tail boat, which are very traditional in Thailand. At first, it’s very niche and exciting, but those boats are loud and not all that comfortable.

Our first stop involved jumping off the boat for snorkelling. It wasn’t bad - there were certainly fish and the water was nice! 

Our next stop was at the Emerald Cave - this involved swimming through a pitch black cave, which then emerged onto a hidden beach. It was cool, but it was absolutely rammed with people. Turns out that all these little boat tours shuttle their groups to the same spots at the same time - it did feel a little cattle car-ish.

We stopped for one more snorkel,  fire heading to Koh Ngai - a beautiful white sand beach. We had lunch on the beach and time for swimming. There were still a lot of people here but also more space, and the water was clear and gorgeous! 

It wasn’t a bad little tour - we had deliberately set our expectations low as we suspected it would be super busy. It was nice to do something a little bit different and explore the region a little. 

We spent another evening watching the sunset and eating dinner on the beach - what a life!

Koh Lanta, although people relatively popular is markedly less busy than places like Phuket and Krabi, which are easier to fly into. It still has a relaxed island vibe and doesn’t feel absolutely crammed with tourists. It was certainly more expensive than Northern Thailand but still affordable. 

With so much overdevelopment in Thailand, we were impressed that Koh Lanta, whilst developed, didn’t have hotel chains and the beach was unspoilt. 

I read online that the local community has been quite coordinated in how they want the island to develop and have advocated against the free-for-all development of other Thai islands - and power to them! 

Whilst there weren’t any huge hotel chains, there were lots of cute beach bungalows and small beach side hotels - being able to wander down to the beach whenever we pleased was perfect!

Just another place in Thailand that I would absolutely recommend!