Koh Lanta: the sea after the downpours, monitor lizards on the road and a walk with a shelter dog

In September 2015 we rode our scooter to the Malaysian border for a visa run and got another month in Thailand. We stayed in Trang for one more day, and on September 18 we set off for Krabi Province, to Koh Lanta. It was the rainy season, and we made our way there through long downpours. But that same day we finally reached the sea and had a good swim.

A quiet island

The island is small and green, and riding around it on a scooter is pure pleasure: there are few people and few cars. There are tourists, and of all kinds of nationalities — Germans, French, English, Americans, Czechs, Russians — but there aren't many of them either: it was the off-season. Most of the people vacationing here are young. It seemed to us that this comes down to the infrastructure: it isn't as developed as in other places, and the island feels like a small village. Calm and cozy, great beaches and small gentle waves.

Prices for a place to stay here are reasonable. In 2015 we rented a very decent room for 250 baht, about 500 rubles, with a fridge and a good TV. We didn't use the air conditioning: with it the room would have cost twice as much, and at night it was comfortable with just the fan. A plate of rice or pad thai with chicken or seafood cost 60 baht on average in a cafe back then, and we also found a place where a big bowl of tasty soup was only 30.

A waterfall in the jungle

Over those days we rode around the whole island and took a walk through the jungle to a small waterfall.

Cats, elephants and monitor lizards

We came across all kinds of animals on the island. First of all, there are a lot of cats here. We saw elephants — not wild ones, though, but the ones that give people rides. A couple of times big monitor lizards crossed the road in front of us: they crawled across slowly and leisurely, and when we got closer, they dashed off into the bushes. Monkeys scurried around on the beaches, and one of them, while we were swimming, sat down on our scooter as if it owned it.

On the last day, September 22, we went to a shelter for dogs and cats. The shelter cats took a liking to our scooter too, and we were trusted to take a dog for a walk — her name was Tammy.

Despite the rainy season, the weather on the island itself was good: in all those days there was only a light shower on the morning of September 22. The next day we moved on to Phuket. From there, in October, we took the same scooter to Malaysia, and only sold it back on Phuket in January 2016 — then went on to Cambodia.