Koh Lanta

We have spent four days in Koh Lanta which is a beautiful and quiet place to relax - the beaches are never full! This is more the place for watching sunsets than partying.
We found a very nice lunching/dining place (Sunset bar) on the Klong Dao Beach with the tables directly on the sand, very good food and quite inexpensive. For some reason it was always full of Scandinavian tourists(might be that it is recommended on some Scandinavian web site).

The beaches were perfect for walking and the swimming was fantastic. But as we needed more adventures, we booked the "elephant trekking" and a boat trip.

First about the elephant trekking experience: a very exciting trip through the real jungles, going up and down the hill and sometimes through water, two of us sitting on the elephant's back (in a sort of a chair) and a guide sitting on the elephant's neck. The sun was very strong and the poor animal made many unplanned stops trying to hide in the shadow. It's a pity though that our elephant was not big enough, so there was not much space for our legs. Jerome had to hold on for dear life especially when we went downhill; he was almost dropping out of the chair... And I still have a stiff neck after that "ride" (had to use my muscles not to fall down)!
We also saw a baby elephant (1,5 years old); it was quite dusty, but very sweet :)

Yesterday we did a Koh Lanta 4 islands tour (boat trip) and have visited the "Emerald cave" on the Koh Mook island. It is a famous "swim-through" cave where we got quite some adrenaline: we had to swim through the cave 80 meters long with a group of around 25-30 people with no day light (only a tourch). Besides our Thai tour guides spiced it up with making some weird sounds. The boat made several stops for snorkelling and it was very beautiful!!!


Oxana

P.S. We've got a video of Jerome snorkelling with a banana, let me see if I can post it here :)