Relaxing on Koh Lanta

Koh Lanta. Ahhh, Koh Lanta. Possibly one of the most chilaxed islands ever - or at least the most chilled out in Thailand. With such a spread out population, it also feels like there's no one around so it's easy to see why so many people love it. The only downside is getting around requires a motorbike - or a large travel budget.

We arrived in Koh Lanta on the ferry from Railay. After being made to pay an island 'cleanup' fee of 20 baht each and pushing our way through the hordes of tuk-tuk drivers trying to sell us accommodation, we wandered into town to grab some lunch. Afterwards, managing to find a tuk-tuk driver who wasn't charging the earth, we jumped on his motorbike sidecar and took off for our guesthouse, a 15 minute ride along the concrete highway. We checked in, then after a wee break from the heat set off to explore on foot. A few hundred metres up the road we came across a small dirt road leading through farmland and disappearing into the palm trees. A simple wooden sign was nailed to a fence post with 'bar' painted on it. With nothing better to do we walked down the track, through the palms and onto the beach.

It wasn't much of a swimming spot thanks to all the sharp rocks in the water but it seemed popular with the local fishermen, as we sat and watched all the boats coming back in from a long day out at sea. With the sun starting to disappear quickly we turned back up the beach and found the tiny beach hut bar. Run by a very relaxed Rastafarian local guy we stayed and drank cold Chang and chatted with a French-Canadian programmer and a New York student, all the while watching the sun set behind the horizon. 'This is the life' we kept saying.

Jade climbing on the rocks, watching the boats.

The pretty sunset we couldn't take our eyes off.

A few drinks later and the sun now long gone, we realised we hadn't eaten since lunch time. Not knowing where we'd find dinner we asked. "Walk up the beach, lots of restaurants" rastaman said. So we set off up the dark beach. It was a still night with only the sound of waves crashing lightly onto the beach, a rustle of palm trees and an occasional crunch under our feet. We drunkenly walked up the beach for a good ten minutes, with only the faint moonlight to guide us - then I remembered I had a torch app on my iPhone. I pulled it out and lit up the beach in front of us. The worst thing I could have done, the beach was moving!

Crabs! Everywhere!

Seconds ago we were blissfully unaware that there were crabs literally covering the beach only just moving out of the way before we put our foot down. Now with the light turned on we could see that we were actually surrounded by them. I don't like crabs at the best of times but I like them even less in the dark, when the beach is one crawling mass of them. Our slow walk become a painfully slow and very careful walk for the rest of the way, as we tried not to step on them or have them run over our feet. You can imagine our relief when we eventually came across a beachfront restaurant for dinner, we didn't care what it was as long as we could get off that beach!

Seeing as the island is so spread out there's really no use in walking and with no public transport the only options are get a tuk-tuk or hire a scooter. Tuk-tuk's are fine, but relatively expensive. Scooters are cheap, but we'd seen a lot of people hobbling around covered in bandages and scraps thanks to a unfortunate scooter ride. With a lot of the roads being pretty terrible over here, a decent bump or hole is enough to throw a careless rider off their bike. Unlucky riders crash when their brakes stop working. So after some serious convincing by Jade I finally agreed to hire one for the day. Luckily (or sensibly) we had no accidents thankfully, except we did end up getting exceptionally lost and very confused when we took off for the south end of the island, and ended up at the northernmost end! I think we were meant to turn down a small side road instead of continuing on the main road which loops back up the island. Oops! Oh well, it's hard to tell when there's no sign posts!

Finally having lunch after getting exceptionally lost!

Now with all the yummy food over here we thought we'd take a Thai cooking class. We rang and booked and an hour later a ute turned up and we jumped on the back. At the kitchen we were presented with ten options to choose from, with the class having to decide on our four favourites to cook. So after some deliberation the winners were: a chicken and coconut milk soup, ginger stir fry with chicken, massaman curry and deep fried bananas. All of them were delicious, the secret I think being the very fresh ingredients picked that morning. Favourites for me were the chicken and coconut milk soup (Tom Kha Gai) and the massaman curry - both so good. The only cooking mistake of the day meant I left with a nice burn over half my elbow, as Jade wasn't being too careful about where he was flinging his very hot wok - thanks Jade.

Chicken and coconut milk soup (Tom Kha Gai), yummy!

Soon enough it was time to move on again, but after a slight hiccup with accommodation confirmations we found ourselves having to stay on the island another night. Luck was on our side this time though as we found a simple rustic bungalow surrounded by palm trees, a hammock on the porch and a minutes walk to the best beach on the island.

The next morning we left Koh Lanta this time with accommodation confirmed, a newfound knowledge of Thai cooking and a fear of dark beaches. With the relaxing over for now, let the party being - Koh Phi Phi here we come!

Welcome to Thailand!

We took the ferry from the Malaysian island of Langkawi back to the mainland, stepping off into Thailand and the town of Satun. Made it through customs without a hitch, just a long wait in the heat while two officials processed all the passengers. Not wanting to stick around in this small southern town we tried to get to the bus station - only to find that the only bus north until late that night was leaving at 3pm, in 10 minutes. And we were still at the port! After a quick haggle with a tour operator, we snatched our tickets, jumped into a car and sped off to the bus station. The driver had no time for rules as he zipped along the winding jungle road, overtaking on corners, weaving in and out of the two lanes. We felt like Hollywood stars escaping from the baddies! 3 o'clock ticked over as we pulled up next to our bus, grabbed our bags out of the boot and clambered aboard. Phew made it! A minute later the bus started up, the doors shut and we trundled off through the bus depot and out onto the road, our next stop: the town of Krabi.

5 hours later, after transferring buses in Trang, we arrived in Krabi mid evening. Thankfully we'd booked accommodation in advance and our guesthouse had said they would pick us up from the bus station. We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Turned out the bus station is closed at night. With no idea where we were, we had a sudden realisation that Thailand was nothing like Malaysia. Nothing was in English, no one spoke English and with the exception of Jades ability to awkwardly count to 10, our Thai skills were non existent. Not very useful. Luckily we had purchased a Thai SIM card so we called our guesthouse. They didn't know where we were either. Oh. With desperation we turned to a tuk-tuk driver. With hand gestures and some pointing to our phone our tuk-tuk friend spoke to our guesthouse and was able to tell them where we were. Half an hour later we were finally picked up, it looked like we wouldn't be sleeping on the street after all!

Jade with the crabs in Krabi

The next day we had a bit of a look around the town but without transportation it was difficult to go too far. Come dinnertime, and some googling for where to eat we came across a Thai restaurant that looked quite good and not too far away on foot. We quickly noted where it was on Jades phone and left. After walking up a road that didn't look like it was the right way for half an hour, with no map and Jades phone suddenly deciding it didn't want to work after all, we discovered we had no idea where we were. Luckily for us a couple of minutes later we just stumbled upon it, and what a find! It was set in a little jungle with only a handful of tables, a little stream running through the property, lights hanging from all the trees and the food was absolutely delicious! Sticky ribs with roasted garlic, a spicy mango salad and a green curry, we wished we could stay longer just to try some more dishes.

Some of the pretty suspended bamboo lights in the jungle like restaurant

The next day we took off for Railay beach, a small peninsula not far from Krabi. Only in order to get to the beach means a short boat ride - it's cut off from the mainland by giant limestone cliffs. To get there we took our first songthaew ride to Ao Nang, passing the sheer limestone cliffs on the way. After a quick bit of shopping, we then boarded our first ruea hang yao - the classic long-tail boat - and noisily putted our way around to Railay Beach. It's a gorgeous wee area which feels like an island with two beaches and a lagoon with a jungle path connecting all three sides. Once again a lot of lying on the beach, reading, relaxing and swimming was done here. We were also starting to get a bit of a tan; we were no longer the whitest people on the beach!

Our first songthaew ride - a ute with seats on the back and used as a bus

The massive limestone cliffs of Railay & the long-tail boats used to get there

Even the towels were crabs!

On our last day we wanted to do some snorkeling and thought the sunset tour looked pretty good. With a small group of people we headed out to a couple of spots to do some snorkeling. Unfortunately the coral was close to dead - no thanks to the group of Russians who stood all over it. But I've never seen so many fish! Schools and schools of them. Our tour guide chucked bits of watermelon into the water around us (the fish go nuts for it), which meant we were completely surrounded by 100s of fish as they all tried to gobble up the fruit. Small ones, big ones, blue, yellow, orange, rainbow coloured fish (and a couple of jellyfish we made sure to stay away from). So many fish! After that we headed to a small island to watch the spectacular sunset and have a BBQ on the beach for dinner. With the sun having finally set and the mainland a twinkling line of lights we boarded our boat for the last item of the tour - swimming with the biolumescent plankton. We anchored offshore from the eastern side of Railay, in the middle of the bay far enough away from the light pollution - it needs to be pitch black for you to see the plankton well. After a quick explanation of what to do: splash, and the plankton will glow, we all grabbed a mask and snorkel and dived into the inky black water. The boat lights were switched off and we started splashing. Wow. The ocean was completely black in the darkness but our arms, hands, legs and feet were lit up as thousands of tiny specs glowed and swirled neon blue-green around us. An amazing sight and definitely a highlight of the trip so far.

Cruising round the islands looking for the best snorkelling spots

The beautiful sunset we watched while eating our beach BBQ

Well time to move on again, we now start the island hopping part of our travels so there will be plenty more golden beaches to explore.

The beautiful Island of Langkawi

Our last stop in Malaysia was the island of Langkawi. Thanks to Jade not wanting to take the simple direct route of a 3 hour boat ride from Penang, we instead took the commuter ferry from Penang over to Butterworth on the mainland. From there we purchased bus tickets to Kuala Perlis  - a small port town right near the Thai-Malaysia border, and a 3 hour drive away. We arrived at Kuala Perlis in the early afternoon and bought our ferry tickets, but with the ferry not departing for over an hour we had to wait around in the tropical heat. Eventually though, after almost half a day spent getting there we made it to the gorgeous island.

Ferry heading to Penang

But we were not quite finished in our travels yet. Langkawi is actually a pretty big island, so a final 30min taxi ride to our accommodation and we could relax! But maybe not luxuriously in our extremely basic room which consisted of: a bed, sink and shoilet (my new name for a shower over the toilet, they are surprisingly very common, guess you can save time and do two things at once!). With no where to put anything it was going to have to be a floordrobe, but I guess you can't complain for 45 Ringgit a night (NZ $18). Then night fell and that's when the real fun started! The room filled with mosquitoes and then a symphony started playing. A symphony of insects and animals that is. Turns out there was a swamp right behind us and this was the favourite hangout of many mosquitoes, frogs, birds and any other animal you can think of that likes to come out at night (to be honest, I really don't know what came out at night, I wasn't going to investigate!). We gave up and went to get a pizza, but it seemed someone really didn't like us as just as we were about to leave a tropical storm hit: the skies opened up and torrential rain poured down, lightening flashed and thunder cracked. Half an hour later we realised the storm wasn't going anywhere, so Jade being the brave one donned his trusty poncho and off he went. On his return, he was the funniest sight: hair plastered to his face, clothes absolutely soaked, water pouring off him. He'd given up on the poncho as it obviously wasn't helping much, but to his credit he'd saved the pizza by wrapping the saturated plastic poncho around it. After eating the surprisingly not wet pizza we tried to block up the gaps where the mosquitoes were coming in (unsuccessfully, need to bring duck tape next time), and slaughter the hundreds which had already breached our security. We were going to need to find mosquito coils. We went to bed. The storm thrashed down outside.

Example of a shoilet

Aside from the rain and the mosquitos, Langkawi is just so relaxing. It's really hard to do anything much apart from lie on the beach, read and relax. And of course cool down with a much needed swim and refreshing drink afterwards. Having said that we did manage to pull ourselves away from the beach long enough to get to Oriental Village, at the foot of Mount Mat Cincang. Many shops, stalls, a petting zoo, bumper boats and you can even ride an elephant if you like! Reminded me very much of Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, just without all the roller coasters. The main attraction though is the cable car which takes you to the top of the heavily forested mountain - but it's a very very steep ride, I definitely would not recommend you look down. Once you make it to the top you can either get off at the small view point, or stay on and be taken over a valley to the main view point at the highest peak which is spectacular. You can look out over the whole island, and on a good day even see islands of Thailand.

Langkawi at sunset.

Where you'd find me most days

View from the top. You can see the orange roofs of Oriental Village below.

Islands of Thailand in the distance.

Coming back down from the cool mountain, we hit a wall of heat - it had gotten very very hot! So we thought we'd walk up the tree-lined road to the Seven Wells waterfall that we'd seen from the cable-car. A few minutes later we were in the shade of the forest, when Jade spotted something moving above us. We looked up to see a squirrel running across the power line. Then a bush up the road started rustling and out popped a monkey! He casually crossed the road and leaped up into a tree, then the rest of the troop followed closely behind. After wondering if that really just happened, we cautiously walked on by and then up a short jungle path to the waterfall. Other people obviously thought it was a good idea also as there were plenty of people cooling off in the rock pools, and it was so refreshing.

View of the waterfall from the top of the cable car.

Jade modelling some swimwear...

After some more lying on the beach and swimming we thought we had better make a move else we might never leave this place. So onto our next adventure... Thailand here we come!