Island life on Koh Lanta

Kaapuunkaa (Hello in Thai, but only for the female gender) from Krabi Airport! My time on Koh Lanta is already over and I'm about to take a flight to the north of Thailand, to Chiang Mai.

But first, let's talk about Koh Lanta: Koh Lanta is the perfect island if you're in the mood for chilling, doing nothing, and simply lying on the beach all day. Fortunately, the island is not overcrowded at all, so as a tourist, you have the luck to find beach areas for yourself and have peace from other stressful tourists. What do you do on Koh Lanta? Lie on the beach, sip fresh fruit smoothies, swim in the (in my opinion) too warm sea, smoke joints in hippie bars, enjoy a few beers in the evening, and of course, rent a scooter and cruise around the island. If you travel from north to south, you will pass by beautiful and diverse beaches. You can stop at any beach, lie down, take a swim, have a beer, and continue (everyone drives and drinks at the same time here). The beaches range from powder-white sandy beaches to gravel and rocky beaches, and each one is beautiful in its own way. The sea is perfect for swimming as it has gentle waves, making it a peaceful swimming paradise. However, there is one downside to swimming in the sea: there are many mini jellyfish that keep 'biting' you in various places, causing your skin to hurt and making the swimming enjoyment fade away. However, lying on the beach for a long time (at least for me) is not easy on Koh Lanta. The sun is so intense that it is hard to handle the heat. Despite sun cream, I got burned very quickly, which rarely happens to me otherwise. But the advantage of Koh Lanta: The Thai people here are quite friendly, as they are not yet annoyed by too many tourists. So right on the beach, I received first aid from a hippie bar owner: He proudly showed me his collection of aloe vera plants, cut off some stems for me, and treated my skin with aloe vera. It's truly a miracle cure! The sunburn pain immediately goes away, and the skin feels very good. So, a little insider tip in case you ever hurt your skin.

After exploring the island, my favorite beach has become a beach with enough shade: Nuibeach. At this small, beautiful beach, you have the perfect mix of white sand and rocks. The water gets cooler when you swim a bit further out, and the best part: there's a live band playing relaxing music on the beach while you can chill in a shady reggae beach bar - what a life luxury. Live music is really something special and can have such an emotional impact.

What else can you do on Koh Lanta besides beach and chill? To be honest, for my taste, a bit too little. Since I am not much of a beach chill/non-action person, I had to make an effort to find activities there. Fortunately, I found a national park in the very south of the island, where you can at least hike for an hour (those who know me can imagine how exhausted I was afterwards ;)). Nonetheless, the national park was very cool as it is full of monkeys, and there are beautiful beach, rock, and jungle sections. As cool as it is to lie on the beach next to monkeys, crazy things can happen at the same time. We saw not only monkeys stealing food from the tourists' backpacks but also cheekily taking shoes or other clothing items and running away with them. They really had fun annoying the tourists, and you could see how similar they are to us humans.

Although Koh Lanta is the perfect place to practice scooter riding due to the few people, I didn't dare to ride a scooter alone and zoom around the island. The worst thing for me is knowing that I'm not insured...and then having to pay for a possibly damaged scooter would not be my greatest pleasure :D. But fortunately, I met super relaxed people on the ferry to Koh Lanta - you can guess three times from which country, if relaxed? Right, among others, 2 Dutch guys :D, who were willing to take me on their scooters and even give me driving lessons. I can hardly imagine better driving instructors than relaxed Dutch people, so my scooter skills went from 'catastrophic' to 'embarrassing'. I am very grateful not only for the scooter training but also for meeting the 2 Dutch guys, an Irish girl, and an American girl (from California)."

Koh Lanta is beautiful, but my feeling of well-being cannot compare to that on Koh Phangan - it just shows how much the people around you can influence you. Another factor that made it difficult for me to enjoy Koh Lanta was my stomach. We had dinner in the beautiful old town of Koh Lanta in the evening - as usual, I ordered a curry and enjoyed it, but only until 30 minutes after the meal. Then I felt nauseous like rarely before in my life, and I just wanted to go to bed. Unfortunately, this disgusting nausea lasted for most of my time on Koh Lanta, so I couldn't do much besides lying on the beach or in bed. I rarely felt so knocked out, I had absolutely no desire to take a single step, everything was sooo unbelievably exhausting. I could hardly keep up when my travel friends went somewhere, and I just wanted to lie down. Even smelling Asian food caused great nausea in me, I couldn't swallow a bite, not even a drink. Unfortunately, I can't vomit, so the food that was tormenting me stayed in my stomach for a long time, causing discomfort for ages. It was a terrible experience for me, but it also taught me a lot: With my slightly distorted relationship with food, I always thought it must be cool and practical to have no appetite and not be able to eat anything - the perfect diet. But that's definitely not the case!!! I have never felt such an aversion to food as in the last few days and from now on, I will be very grateful for my usually healthy appetite. Eating is really something beautiful, and when the stomach refuses to cooperate, it becomes a torture instead of something you should wish for someone. Next, I learned how awful it feels when you can't keep up, when you lag behind and don't have the energy to be as fast as others in the group. Usually, I'm the one who walks/rides ahead, and I probably have too little sympathy for those with less energy. Slowly but surely, I'm starting to understand why some people don't want to cycle with me anymore and how stupid it is to lag behind. And I also learned something else: Although I often don't want to admit it, sometimes I also really need a caring mom. When you're sick and helpless like a pile of misery, all you want is to go home, to your mom, to be taken care of, to cry, not to be alone. At this point, a huge thanks to my mother for being so lovingly there for me even at a distance - it made the suffering much easier. I'm also very grateful to have met the group of other travelers who provided me with medicine and comfort. Being sick alone is one of the worst things for me and it feels so lonely. Even though I know that loneliness is part of solo traveling and I chose it that way, I would love to run away from it every time. But when you can't run anymore because your stomach doesn't cooperate, you just have to face a lot of sadness, loneliness, anger, and other unpleasant feelings. But they are also part of life, and in my opinion, it's good to consciously experience them. So, my view of Koh Lanta is a bit clouded by my lack of energy and limited ability to do things, but I definitely don't want to badmouth the island. For families, couples, or groups of friends who just want to chill on the beach, it's a paradise. And for hippies as well =). By the way, I stayed in a hippie hostel because I thought I'd give it a try. On the one hand, it's very cool with the reggae music until late at night, the beautifully sweet hippie interior, and the relaxed people. On the other hand, I had to realize that I'm miles away from being a hippie. Having mushrooms and joints every evening, no real toilets & showers, and organizational chaos are still hard-to-handle things for me. Too bad, but you can't always change your nature...

From Koh Lanta, I traveled to Krabi today and now I'm looking forward to the flight to Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai, there are supposed to be many mountains, perfect for me. Also, tomorrow in Chiang Mai, I have 2 highlights: 1. I will meet Connor, my New Zealand friend from Koh Phangan again. I'm really looking forward to seeing someone I'm already somewhat familiar with, especially since I'm still not feeling completely fit. Meeting new people only superficially over and over again is quite exhausting for me, so I'm really excited about having deep talks with Connor :). And the 2nd highlight: I'll be going to a Buddhist meditation retreat with monks tomorrow. I will live with the monks for 2 days, learn about their lives, and especially learn meditation from them. I'm super excited to see how it will be and will report back afterwards. However, I will probably be without talking and without a mobile phone in the monastery, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. Best regards, enjoy winter, and if anyone has any stomach tips, please feel free to share :) (P.S.: Sorry if I'm writing a bit confused today, my head is not functioning very clearly at the moment ;))Content