On our way back we decided to find the waterfall, there is a dirt track that takes you halfway there, but then you’ll have to park up your ped and walk the rest of the way. The walk is teaming with wildlife, we even saw a snake slithering its way along the path. When we finally reached the waterfall it was a little underwhelming. We hadn’t considered the dry season and unfortunately it was more of a trickle than the waterfall we imagined.

We stopped off at Bakantiang Beach which strangely had a random blow up snowman waving around in the breeze right in the middle of the beach. There’s a great bar here named Same Same but Different where you can sit and chill with a drink. We stayed until it was time to get back before dark. We didn’t want to be riding the peds in the dark as the the roads aren’t lit and the bike lights weren’t the best it would’ve been like riding blind and it wasn’t worth the risk of an accident. We did pass an Elephant at one point and we stopped to see it had been chained up which was sad to see. They offer Elephant treks, but that’s not something I’m interested in. I have done bathing with the elephants in Chiang Mai which was amazing.

If you like diving there are some fantastic places here with incredible visibility, underwater pinnacles, coral outcrops and masses of marine life. Ko Haa, which is an hour and a half out, is a collapsed volcanic island with steep drop-offs to the side and more than a dozen dive sites, caverns and chambers where you’ll see turtles, octopus and pointy-nosed barracuda. You don’t have to arrange a dive through your hotel as there are dive shops in almost every village and they are usually cheaper and just as good. If scuba isn’t your thing, there’s brilliant fishing, amazing snorkelling, sea kayaking to the limestone caves at Koh Talabeng and longtail boat trips to the gnarled mangroves around Koh Klang and Koh Lanta Noi.

There are full-moon parties, half-moon parties etc, but they are all on the small scale. It’s just an excuse to string up the paper lanterns and call in a local band that do great renditions of Oasis. The island offers an appealing escape from the highly popular tourist destinations like Phuket and Phi Phi. If you want to party then this won’t be for you, no one comes here for that, you’ll want to go to Phuket or Samui. Lanta is not cutting-edge, it’s not cool. It’s at ease in its own skin.

We stayed in a hostel on long beach. However we made a mistake when booking the hostel, it’s true when they say you get what you pay for. We stayed at Funky Fish, it was only $3 a night, that’s a steal! The pictures looked nice. However while browsing lots of other options and going back to book we didn’t realise there were two places called Funky Fish, the Resort, the one that looked nice and then this one, the hostel. Yep, in our haste to find somewhere we booked the wrong Funky Fish. It turned out the one we had booked was a steal because it was basically a cow shed with 5 wooden bunk beds, the thinnest mattress ever and four conventional fans in each corner of the room, perfect with temperatures hitting 32ºc at night 🥵. The showers didn’t work either, they just dripped water. We ended up washing by going for a swim in the sea. There was no real surprise that we were the only ones staying there, probably the worst nights sleep I’ve ever had.

Location wise the hostel was perfect, on the beach in the middle of the Island. The bar on the beach, The Funky Fish Beach bar was surprisingly good and we did have a great meal there while watching the sunset as we did at the Somewhere Else bar next door. Just make sure you leave yourself time to book and double, triple check that you are booking the right place. Don’t leave it to the last minute rushing and make the same mistake we did.

Due to the rather uncomfortable sleeping arrangement we cut short our stay by a day, staying just 2 nights before moving on to Krabi. To be honest we had pretty much covered the Island anyway in those two days. The only thing we didn’t do was go over the bridge to the small island and explore any of that.