Seclusion At Last! (Koh Lanta)

Every now and then when you’re travelling, you come across a place that draws you in, and you end up spending more time there than you expected.  For me, Koh Lanta was a good example of that.

Koh Lanta is much larger than Koh Phi Phi, and while it’s still plenty touristy, it’s a lot easier to avoid crowds.  There are a number of different beaches, and the further south you go, the thinner the crowds tend to get.  I lucked upon a great budget hostel directly beside Klong Nin Beach, and for my first night I was offered the biggest room for the price of a budget room.

Fantastic place.  No wonder I stayed there five nights...

The days passed in bliss, each one presenting me with plenty of opportunities to swim, sun bake, read, write, watch sunsets, and catch up on this blog.  The street that loops the island was pretty quiet, but it was only a 1-2km walk to town, where I filled up on chaa yen (Thai iced milk tea) and some of my favourite fruits and snacks, which I knew I would miss after leaving Thailand.  It was a magical combination of being productive while being utterly relaxed and peaceful.

I bought a new notebook for writing.  I love the message on its front

Every evening I was treated to this spectacular sight

But even I can’t stay still for too long.  On my last day, I joined another snorkeling adventure around nearby islands.  I had a really fun group of American, English, and Nepalese holidaymakers.

Limestone formations never get old

Have you ever swum through a cave in pitch-blackness?  That was the first thing we did.  We jumped off our boat near the cave's mouth.  Everyone had to wear lifejackets, but my lifejacket popped open when I started swimming.  All the seams were ripped and pieces of foam trailed out behind me.  After switching to another lifejacket, I had some serious swimming to do to catch up with the rest of the group.  I entered darkness alone.

After swimming around the first bend, we couldn’t see the entrance or exit.  At that point, our guide switched his torch off, eliciting screams from some of the girls.  Deep, animalistic growls echoed through the cave, no doubt coming from hidden speakers.  It was atmospheric, but never really scary – there were too many groups swimming through the passage.

The cave opened onto a tiny secluded beach surrounded by cliffs and lush forest.  It was a perfect little hiding place full of people.

Most of our group

The only entrance and exit to this beach

A lot of the groups were foreign tour groups.  As the groups lined up to make the swim back through the tunnel, one guide told his Chinese tour group that they had to hold on to the person in front of them.  We’re talking about thirty people swimming through a cave like this.

The Asian-American guy from my group chuckled, coining the term, “Asian train.”  We passed them easily (I think the train idea was slowing them down more than anything), but there were lots of shared grins.  They seemed to find it just as funny as we did.

This wasn’t otherwise a guided tour, and all the snorkeling we did by ourselves, without a guide.  Again, I felt absolutely spoilt to be treated to such colourful and vibrant underwater sights – though, sadly, an awful lot of the ecosystem down there has already been destroyed.

As we paused our activities to have lunch on a small island, a storm came rolling in.  When it started spitting we had to get back in the boat and return to Koh Lanta.  We missed our last snorkeling destination, but with the rain clouding the water, we wouldn’t have seen much anyway.

You can’t pay for good weather

I left Koh Lanta the next day and was crammed on a Phuket-bound ferry with probably more people than it should have been carrying.  There were way more people than seats, and with the deck being battered by wind and rain, most people chose to cram inside.  It wasn’t a particularly fun trip, but it got me from A to B.

Phuket is a bag of mixed jelly beans.  Some people rave about its beaches.  Some people complain about its seediness.  Some people rave about its seediness.  I think the message here is that there’s something for everyone, which explains why it’s such a huge draw for international crowds.

I was happy to stay for a night, but I was keener on my next destination.

The beach looked nice, but after the perfection of Koh Lanta, I wasn’t too fazed

The clock was ticking.  I had less than two weeks of travel left.  I hadn’t yet been to northern Thailand, and I’d heard entirely way too many great things about Chiang Mai to leave Thailand without checking it out.