Koh Lanta

Hi Everyone!

Dax here finally posting for the first time myself.  A huge thanks to Liz for doing such a great job of keeping our travel blog so far.  As she has already said we highly recommend taking a trip like this with the love of your life, it makes exploring such an incredible part of the world that much more amazing.

We've also been enjoying hanging out with our best man Elias - we love you buddy!

It's now Monday, December 19th, one week until Xmas.  We started yesterday getting picked up in Ao Nang and taken to the ferry for our trip to Koh Lanta.  Even though the seas were calm we took our sea sickness pills just in case but in the end it was calm seas the entire way - whew!

The scenery on the trip over was gorgeous, all the islands of various sizes - some just rocks - sprouting out of the ocean near and far was a real treat.

We didn't take this next picture, it's just a net grab to show you the area and how fun it was to check out from the sea:

We thought it was Phang Nga island at first since we'd just seen it in The Man With The Golden Gun and it was in the area but after we checked out some more pictures we realized that it was close but no cigar.  It's fun to be roaming the seas and islands where the bond movie we saw last week is located tho - it also took place in Hong Kong which we loved and are heading back to at the end of our journey.

After a nice calm ride on the ocean we arrived in Koh Lanta and immediately could see the place was much more our speed than Ao Nang or Chaweng had been, a lot less touristy, far less stores everywhere, more Thai people and a super chilled out island time attitude everywhere.

We grabbed an open air taxi from the pier to our new hotel, The Lanta Mermaid.

I'm especially happy that we're back to a nice hotel after a bit of an off note in Ao Nang - the hotel there being right on the road was pretty loud at night, the internet was janky and then broken and overall it wasn't a good value.

The Lanta Mermaid is awesome tho - the people are super nice and helpful, the place is spotless and meticulously maintained by the manager/owner who clearly takes pride in what he does.

And the internet works great! :)

Here's a glimpse of our room at the Lanta Mermaid:

And your happy blog author confirming that we have reliable internet again - that was one of my priorities when booking rooms on this trip so I could keep in touch with folks back home and make sure things are flowing and all that.

After getting settled we took a walk to get some lunch and start exploring but I choose the wrong way and we ended up going further from the food spots so we hopped in a tuk tuk and got a ride into Saldan  town - only 100 baht.  :)

After a super yummy lunch at the Sala Lanta we decided to rent a jeep and take the travel reigns in hand for real for the first time on the trip.  Lots of folks rent scooters and motorcycles (some even tuk tuks!) but after seeing a couple accidents and how people drive here we decided to play it safe - precious cargo don't you know!

Here's our ride:

It was very straight forward renting a car, show them the passport, fork over some baht and within 10 minutes they drop off a car, no questions asked, no international drivers license required, easy.

We decided to explore down the west coast of the island and just started driving.

Here's a map of the island if you're curious:

We kept on the coast (easy considering there are like 3 roads) - stopping for a snack and some shopping  where Liz got a yummy Thai style mango pancake and found some Thai pants and a super cute new Thai style dress that she has worn in 3 different ways already and of course looks even more beautiful in each new configuration - what a lucky man I am!

We also found a super chilled out little reggae bar/restaurant/shop that told us about a party they were having with a live band later that night - we've been known to enjoy reggae on the beach so it sounded like a good option for the evening.

Continuing our drive down the coast we made it all the way to the southern most point on the island that you can drive to - the Mu Koh Lanta National Park, parked the jeep and started exploring.

Here's my happy girl in front of the park sign:

There is a rocky beach just across from the park entrance that we decided to explore since the rocks here are so much different than back home - not just the limestone erosion but all sorts of different colored rocks.

Here's a detail shot of the lime stone - Elias tells us that this happens from the rain water reacting with the limestone, turning into a kind of acid that eats away the rock very slowly.  Super cool.

Here's a shot of us exploring the rocky coast of the park - the happy couple!

The abandoned lighthouse you see in the background was our next stop, after a short hike up there Liz did a victory Hi-Yah!

Here's the view from the lighthouse down, that's Liz's foot. :)

After our little hike we decided to get back in the jeep and noticed a fun sign:

After we hopped in the jeep and started driving out of the park we stopped when we saw a family of wild monkeys crossing the road!!! 

Our first truly wild monkeys in the wild, a family of 5 - we got to see them cross, check us out and then jump up into the trees - there was even a cute little baby monkey that had a bit more trouble than the others on the tree jumping but worked it out - Liz grabbed a quick snapshot:

We actually saw another couple monkeys crossing the road on our drive back north to the mermaid - so cool!

Once we were back at the mermaid we tried calling Elias as he should have arrive on the island to meet up with us by now but no luck - right to voicemail.   15 minutes later who should show up at our hotel but the man himself - along with all of his bags and a phone with a dead battery that didn't let him look up his hotel information.

We sorted him our and gave him a ride to his bungalow down the road in our rental Jeep so he could get cleaned up for dinner.

We met back up and took the jeep down for a pre-dinner drink at Mong's Bar - the most chilled out bar on the island and probably one of the most chilled out spots on the planet.

After we each had a coconut (Liz and Eli got theirs spiked with rum but not me since I was driving and let me tell you that driving on the left takes some real getting used to) we headed off to get dinner and see the reggae show.

The reggae bar was in full beach party mode and has stopped serving dinner so we went next door and had a fabulous meal overlooking the beach, still in range of the speakers from the reggae bar next door so we had a great soundtrack and the best of company, all making for a wonderful dinner even though we were still a bit hungry and they didn't tell us the kitchen closed.

After dinner we just walked next door and down to the beach to see if the band had really started - turns out they had and were just so good we hadn't realized that we were no longer listening to the DJ!!!

It was a really nice set up on the beach with a lot of the locals sitting on blankets in the sand or at the small candle lit tables the bar had set up, soaking up the positive reggae vibes.

Here's a shot of the band, full on 8 piece reggae band with a horn section and a DJ:

The band was really fun, I was super tired so we didn't stay for the whole thing - I had to get my cargo safely home and get some rest to kick a tiny bit of congestion that had been creeping up - not getting sick so much as just wanting to make sure I'm not congested at all since we are planning on diving Wednesday and it can really interfere with equalization which would be no good.

Now it's Monday and we're about to go pick up Eli and resume exploring the island.

Big love to all of our friends and family back home and more to come soon!