Trang & Ko Lanta

After landing back in Thailand at Hat Yai we got on a minibus to Trang, which we understood to be the hub from where one visits the nearby islands. Trang is a pretty irrelevant small town, but luckily there was a food market that night which was awesome. There didn't seem to be many foreigners there so we got quite a bit of attention, presumably roughly translated as "hey, everyone come and look at these two white people, one even has blonde hair. QUICK! LOOK! Look how ridiculous they are, yeah I know they are idiots, they don't even know what this food is! They must be so retarded!" We tucked in.

Quails eggs & chilli sauce

Next day we got a minibus to Ko Lanta, after being informed that, with the exception of a few pricey resorts, the Trang islands were basically closed for low season. Ko Lanta was extremely quiet. The island is about 30km long and at least half the hotels and restaurants strung along the east coast were closed for the low season. We took a day trip to visit some of the Trang Islands where we had intended to stay. Apart from the truly deafeningly loud longtail boat (little wooden boat with unsilenced truck engine bolted on a bit of scaffolding to the back) it was cool. We stopped at 2 fairly average snorkelling spots, but then stopped for lunch on a breathtakingly beautiful beach on Ko Ngai:

   

In the afternoon we went to this awesome cove on Ko Muk where you swim 80m through a dark tunnel (luckily the guide brought a torch) and emerge in this tiny little crazy paradise beach area, surrounded on all sides by cliffs and jungle.

The rest of our time in Ko Lanta was fairly uneventful as there just wasn't a huge amount going on. We took a motorbike up and down the island one day, and were able to enjoy sunsets from our hotel (below). 4 nights was maybe a little too long but it was nice to have time to do nothing for a couple of days before moving on a getting the ferry to our next island, Phi Phi.