An Elephant Experience on Koh Lanta

Koh Lanta. Firstly, a shout out to our first hostel – Lanta House. It was fantastically located right next to the night market and the lady who ran the place was lovely… BUT…

This was mine and Andy’s bed. Not only did it scream, let’s say, “flamboyance”, it was also the hardest, most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever slept on. A mattress shouldn’t go *bang* when you hit it. Andy and I were in a lot of pain after our nights in this bed…

That’s enough homoerotica. In the morning we had breakfast by the sea.

Our hostel was at the northern tip of the island, near the Saladan Pier. Here, the shops and pubs etc are built on stilts that jut out into the sea channel. It’s pretty bloody chilled, but on this day we had better plans than watching the boats chug by…

A taxi picked us up at about 1:15pm, to take us to the centre of the island – about 15km away. Here, we found elephants.

The Lanta Elephant Sanctuary is a sanctuary for elephants on Lanta.

If ever you visit this part of the world and want to meet some elephants, it’s better that you choose a sanctuary over an elephant hike. I’m sure y’all know this.

The Lanta Elephant Sanctuary has been open for around 4 months. The elephants here are fresh from an elephant hike company, where our guide informed us of the hardship they have to endure. They have to live their lives in chains; in the wild, an elephant sleeps for just two hours a day – the rest of the time they are eating, eating, eating, to maintain their massive bulk. Chained animals are forced to work to a human timetable and because they NEED to eat, they often don’t sleep. Our guide knew this because he had worked in this sector for many years. Here at the sanctuary, the elephants do what they want, when they want. Riding the elephants is forbidden – an elephant’s back is not actually strong enough to be ridden, and doing so can lead to some pretty serious spinal problems.

Our tickets cost 1800 baht – about £44. It’s more expensive than an going trekking, but worth it if you care about elephant wellbeing.

We were introduced to the three elephants, all females named Dookdik (45 years old), Mali (40) and Srisook (20). I believe the elephant above is Mali. Don’t worry – her ivory have not been had by poachers. Female Indian elephants don’t have tusks.

We were given bananas to feed the girls.

You could either hand the banana to their trunks, or risk your fingers and put them straight in the mouth. Andy was having success but I was not.

For not the first time in my life, this girl just didn’t want my banana. Eventually she took it off me and just held onto it in her trunk.

Stroking/patting an elephant is like stroking a brush – particularly on the trunk. It’s very bristly.

After the bananas ran out, the group were invited to take some mud from a small pool and giving the elephants a mud spa.

Elephants don’t sweat, so this is how they keep cool. The mud also protects them from parasites.

Obviously, when your hands are wet and muddy, you can’t use your hands to take photos. But the Lanta Elephant Sanctuary has its own photographer, who uploads the pictures to their Facebook page every night.

After the mud spa, it was bath time.

And of course, we were allowed to join them.

Shoes/flip-flops are not advised, as the mud at the bottom is incredibly squelchy. You’re basically walking in a mix of clay and elephant shit. You have to be careful getting too close to the elephants, cos they have a tendency to roll over – and if you’re in the way with your feet stuck, you’re not gonna be able to stop her squashing you.

After bathtime, it was time to say goodbye. It was our dinner time. The sanctuary provided us loads of free water, and some delicious pineapple and watermelon.

It was a fantastic experience, one I’m sure many of you are jealous of. You can’t come to Thailand and not visit these magnificent animals. For more info on the Lanta Elephant Sanctuary, click here: lantaelephantsanctuary.com 👌🏻

For the rest of our time on Koh Lanta, we just chilled. It’s a very chilled island – there isn’t that much here. But at night loads of families will just emerge from who-knows-where. They’re mostly German and French as well – perhaps Koh Lanta is to Germany what Phuket is to England.

We moved down from the Saladan area to Khlong Khong Beach, where you can find some “chill out” bars… Weed and mushrooms are available for purchase.

This is the apparently famous Freedom Bar. Once again, our beach day was spoiled by the clouds. We must be cursed.

The beach here isn’t the best for swimming as there are lots of concealed rocks just off shore that you have to get around. I got a few cuts.

That night there was a party, with a fire show.

These guys were much, much better than the “performers” on Tonsai in Krabi. For one, these guys didn’t accidentally nearly set the audience on fire. They also knew how to catch.

Our second day on the beach was much nicer.

A Sex On The Beach was needed in this heat.

After two days of chilling (and two nights contending with cockroaches at our Unseen Bungalow hostel), it was time to leave Koh Lanta. We had one last night in Krabi Old Town, where we found a KFC box deal containing 4 spicy drumsticks, 1 piece of fried chicken, 3 nuggets, some fries and a bottomless Pepsi for £3.83. Still our best valued meal of the holiday.

Our final Krabi hostel was the Amity and tbf it was a pretty decent place with comfy beds and good showers. The minibus picked us up in the morning and we finally left the Krabi area of Thailand on a nine hour trip to Koh Samui…