10 days on Koh Lanta

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From Krabi we got a minibus to Koh Lanta. It's an island but there are car ferries taking you across. Boats weren't running when we travelled because the seas were still so high. The place was literally deserted when we arrived. We were dropped off at the Long Beach resort because we asked to go to the beach called long beach - turned out to be lucky as they were giving a really good discount on quite swish rooms!

The rooms are pretty swanky - although we are right down the back as usual - with a pool, big tv etc. and we're getting 5 nights for the price of 4. Of course we had to go and look at every other possibility before checking in.. grr, but we ended up back there.

Not that much to say about Lanta because we've mostly just done nothing. The weather didn't clear up until about the 3rd day so we were in the room for a while, but since the weather broke its been glorious every day. The beach on Lanta take quite a battering during the monsoon season and they are still clearing up all the debris - trees, bits of boat, plastic zoo animals... - and repairing all of the walkways and bar fronts that were destroyed.

Since the first few days - when nothing was open - a couple of restaurants and bars along the beach have started to come back to life. Also on the main road (only road) behind the resorts a fabulous restaurant called The Tavern opened. Its western food and fantastic but the portions are so huge that we've limited ourselves to just 2 breakfasts and 2 dinners there, so far. There is also a really nice beach restaurant called Somewhere Else, where we've eaten most nights. It has raised beach seating areas and cocktails for 1.60 pound - so can't go wrong really!

Whilst on Phi Phi and Lanta we looked around some dive shops, thinking about taking the plunge again - after 5 years out. On Phi Phi everyone wanted us to do a review course, except for one rather intense and scary guy from London. We weren't that enamoured of going through all the basics again for lots of money, we just needed someone to take us back in.

On Koh Lanta the diving was a lot more expensive per dive but it offered the advantage of going to a very quiet dive site - just 11 on our boat and one other boat - and the divemaster (dm) Lee was happy to just take us out and check we were ok in the water. We ended up going with Lanta Palm Divers to Ko Ha to do two dives with just us and dm Lee on Tuesday 7 October :-D

We're really glad we did - it was really relaxed with just the three of us and we found we remembered it all as we went along. Dm Lee was even surprised how much air we still had left after the dives... naturals ;-) We did two dives - one at Ko Ha Laguna for 59 minutes and we saw a moray eel, an octopus, sea snake, lots of barracuda... and after lunch we dived at Secret Garden (still Ko Ha) for 56 minutes and we saw a leopard shark (it was sleeping on the sand below us and was fantastic), a turtle, lobsters, trigger fish... Brilliant dives with loads of lovely corals and tons of fish and great visibility.

The dive site is a two hour boat ride from Koh Lanta, so after a 7.30am start we didn't get back until about 4pm. A long day of excitement. We went straight to eat tea when we got back and were in bed not long after!

After that we had just one more day of relaxing before setting off for the border run to renew our visas in Penang. We decided to split the journey in two and went to Hat Yai on Thursday (9th) for one night.

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Photos

The room, Nakara Resort
It was always a pleasure to come home to find out what our towels would be doing!

Comments

[Izzy]

Bloody hell!!
Lee you look really scary. And Lisa you look really skinny! You're packing so much in and the diving sounds great. What sort of price are the 'swish' rooms?

[2 Farangs]

Swish rooms
Hello - thank you for reading our blog :-D We're still in 'green season' (rainy) so rooms are cheapish - the nice room we had on Ko Lanta was about 8 pound a night - they rise steeply at the end October though so not looking forward to that!