Ko Lanta

The next island we visited was Ko Lanta. This island is much bigger than Ko Lipe and is actually made up of two islands, Ko Lanta Noi (North) and Ko Lanta Yai (South). We were staying on the southern part in a place called Long Beach.

Our time on Ko Lanta was pretty chilled. We spent a lot of time researching and planning the onward part of our trip. We were originally planning to visit some of the islands on the east coast, but when we realised how long it would take to get to Chiang Mai overland, we decided to go straight there.

Our first afternoon on Ko Lanta was spent lazing about in a local bar before watching the sunset over the beach.

The districts on Ko Lanta are all called Moo. We were staying in Moo 1 and on our first night, we walked to Moo 2 for dinner at Patty’s Secret Garden. We then walked back along the beach where a very thin crescent moon meant we could see lots of stars, despite the bright lights coming from some of the beach front resorts.

The next day, we booked onto a cooking class, in Lanta Old Town on the other side of the island. “Cooking with Mon” had received excellent reviews on TripAdvisor so despite being a bit of a drive away, we decided to go for it, and it did not disappoint! There were 12 of us in the class, a mix of British, American, Australian, Finnish and Dutch.

The menu for the day was Pad Thai, Tom Yum soup, Khao Soi (a northern Thai noodle curry dish) and Mango Sticky Rice. Mon explained the basis of Thai cooking - sweet (palm sugar), sour (from tamarind paste), salty (fish sauce) and spicy (chilli). He made us taste each of the ingredients individually so we could judge how much of each we wanted to put into our own dishes. We even used tamarind and galangal grown in his own garden.

The class was really easy to follow and in total we were there for about 6 hours. After cooking each dish, we went round and tried each other’s dishes and it was surprisingly how different they could taste despite using the same ingredients. The hardest part was making the khao soi paste from scratch using a pestle and mortar. This was definitely the tastiest dish though. At the end of the class, we received a PDF copy of all the recipes Mon teaches so we’ll have to try making some when we get home.

We were so full after a day of eating that we didn’t bother with dinner that night, instead choosing to stay in the hostel and watch TV.

The following day we hired bicycles (we wanted to hire scooters but weren’t allowed as we hadn’t ridden one before) and cycled to Secret Beach. While not particularly secret (there was a big arrow to it from the main road!), it was one of the only beaches we’ve seen with shade. This meant we could spend the day relaxing, swimming, reading and quizzing. Considering we’re a pretty active couple, it was surprisingly enjoyable to do nothing for the day!

After doing some chores (getting jabs, buying a plug adapter as I forgot to bring one, getting money out (a surprisingly difficult task) and eating some odd unicorn flavoured ice cream, aptly named Unicornetto), we headed back to Moo 2 to the Unseen restaurant (again, not particularly well named as it was right on the main road!). Having done the cooking class the day before, it was interesting trying to pick out all the flavours in the food we ate. Again we wandered back along the beach, our last opportunity for a while as we leave the islands behind and head north the following day.