Julia's Travels: Ko Lanta and Krabi

From Phi Phi, I continued my journey south along the Andaman coast. I bid my friend Sonja farewell and hopped on a ferry to Ko Lanta. Ko Lanta was like a less-crowded, more spread out version of Phi Phi (minus the beautiful limestone cliffs). I was only there for 2 days, but from was I saw, it seemed like a nice place.

I had wanted to do some diving here as well, but couldn't risk hurting my eardrum, so I skipped the diving. On the ferry, I met a super-sweet French girl named Stefanie, so the two of us had fun walking around, checking out the beaches and swimming. She even convinced me to try riding a motor scooter (she was driving). I was totally terrified, but survived the experience in one piece.

The next stop was Krabi. Stefanie and I took a mini-bus from Ko Lanta to Krabi, and checked into the Sheraton (internal princess and the pea needed a little more pampering, courtesy of my hotel points....thank you very much). The hotel was a fantastic and a much needed break from the budget bungalow scene, and the coastline north of Krabi was stunning, but as it turns out our little piece of paradise was about 15 km away from civilization. This would have been ok, but as we quickly found out, the local taxi/tuk tuk mafia has a strangle-hold on all transportation, so getting around was really, really expensive. What we didn't incur in room costs, was quickly counterbalanced by what we had to shell out just to get around. I only spent a few days in Krabi and from what I saw, it was a beautiful place, but like much of this region of Thailand, there were a zillion foreign tourists and it felt very much like the beaten path.

By the time I left Krabi (early December), I had been in Southern Thailand for about 2 weeks. When I departed from Bangkok, I was expecting beautiful beaches and chilled out backpacker haunts. Southern Thailand partially delivered; there were some beautiful places, but a lot more foreign tourists than I had ever imagined (and most of them not of the backpacker variety). Southern Thailand had some of its own unexpected positives. One of them being the opportunity to connect with more female travelers. Perhaps it's Thailand's safe reputation, but there seem to be a lot more women traveling alone in the country. As I've mentioned before, I haven't met nearly as many female travelers as male travelers on this trip and I really miss hanging out with my girlfriends. No offense to all of the great guys I've met and traveled with, but sometimes I just need a little girl time.

-Julia