We had planned to cycle down to Old Town Lanta stop there for a night and get some sort of ferry across to the mainland from there. All the best laid plans …. in fact we started off the day by walking down to the pier area and asking about a ferry to the mainland, there is only a small speedboat which cannot take bicycles going eventually to the mainland. That nice bridge brought the demise of a number of ferry routes as it is now easier to drive.

Our only view of the sea from the West side of Koh Lanta

The bridge mentioned earlier

With this in our minds we cycled down to the Old Town and the huge pier there hoping there would be something to ferry us across. Nothing, so we will retrace our steps tomorrow.

The cycle down the West side of the Island reveals tourism is the main money earner, all of a sudden lots of pizza restaurants, massage parlours and tattoo shops catering for us westerners. What else could we do but eat pizza, be massaged and get love and hate tattooed on our knuckles? Or just cycle down a road busy with rented scooters and taxis we chose the latter as tempting as a tattoo is.

Enterprising people sell scooter sized bottle of petrol for 40 baht

There was a small section of beachfront in an otherwise endless line of shops, bars, restaurants, etc. Then a climb up and over to the East side of the island. The East side is the opposite, quiet less developed altogether much nicer, no beaches though.

The Old Town is very much like where we stopped last night, we got cold drinks sat a while realising there is no ferry for us to get. So rather than stopping here we cycled the 18 km along the East side of the island back to our starting point today. This was a lovely road, undulating but quiet and even when the temperature hit 43°C we still liked it!

Old Town Lanta

View from the end of the pier

At the end of the pier

Once we got back to the start we said hello to Jetty Place again getting the same room back but at 642 baht this time.

Not one’s to fall into a routine but we did exactly what we did last night, ate at Catfish Resturant, the food was one of the nicest meals we have had in Thailand, high praise indeed. Feeling very content we made our way back to Jetty Place and settled down for the night.

Picture of my chair in the resturant

The Strava route today.