A beautiful, relaxed yet bustling island with gorgeous beaches and coves, colourful beach bars and nightly fire shows. An ideal family friendly escape.
Koh Lanta Top Recommendations:
- Stay in Klong Dao if you are a family.
- Easy Bar on Klong Dao for lunch and/or dinner.
- Walking Street at Saladan Pier for yummy, cheap street food in the evening.
- Klong Nin Beach for sunset and cocktails.
- Ao Nui beach for one of the best beaches you will see.
- Pad Thai Rock n Roll in Kantiang Bay for delicious Pad Thai.
- Mangrove Kayaking Trip for a bit of adventure and monkey interaction.
- Fireshow at Klong Dao nightly.
Read on for more detailed information…..
Where to stay?
We chose Banana Beach Resort in Klong Dao for 5 nights. It was a triple room (double and single bed) which was in a little bungalow set back from the pool, steps away from the beach. The shower was hot, pool welcome in the heat, breakfast decent but beds a little hard! It was basic but it suited us fine, we paid £300 for 5 nights but this was over high season.
There was also a small park, football goals and a swing for the kids and they ran off every morning as soon as we woke up to play with their new friends. We loved the location and friendliness and would recommend, especially for family travellers.
Klong Dao
This resort is in the north of the island, about 10minutes in a tuk tuk from Saladan Pier. We chose this area because of reviews we had read saying it was more family orientated and the water safe for paddling. We weren’t expecting such an influx of families from around the world or restaurants with an array of toys and kids areas. Our boys fitted seamlessly into island life having fun with many children from different places, wonderful to see how language isn’t a barrier when playing.
We spent many evenings wandering along the beach, finding happy hours, kicking footballs, chasing crabs and eating pad thai washed down with cold Lion beer. Easy Bar about half way down the beach does great food, we ate lunch and dinner there and they have a great kids menu….oh and frosted glasses for a super cold beer! Around 8pm every night there is a fire show on Klong Dao beach that is well worth a watch.
Saladan Town
We very nearly missed this place but decided to check it out on a whim because of some Lonely Planet recommendations for restaurants. From the book and what we could see online it seemed like it was just going to be a few shacks by the side of the road….however it is a busy area. There’s a big market where we managed to get the boys some cheap toys with their Christmas money and then we wandered down to Walking Street where there were numerous food stalls set up, cocktail stands, musicians playing guitar etc, it had a great vibe and we were so glad we stumbled across it.
We found the street adjacent which has a few restaurants and settled on The Fat Pig for dinner – it had good Trip Advisor reviews. The location was beautiful overlooking the pier, food was decent too. However, we were early into our trip and still very keen on Thai food whereas this place is great if you’re craving some western food particularly burgers which did look incredible. Our meals were nice (no kids menu though) and we enjoyed the views but we were eager to get back to the street market for dessert – trusty banana and nutella crepes. Yum!
Klong Nin
This is about 20mins in a Tuk Tuk south down the coast to the middle of the island. We got there around 4pm to have a bit of beach time, watch the sunset and have dinner. Wow – what a beautiful beach.
Think this was our favourite spot in Koh Lanta, the beach was incredible and there were numerous beach bars dotted along the way. We started at Rasta Baby, Reggae Bar a cool beach bar obviously playing reggae music, they were setting up for a live band later on in the evening. We moved further down to Harry’s Sunset Bar where colourful bean bags and beach mats were on the sand and chilled sunset music was being played…it reminded us both of Ibiza. The sunset didn’t let us down and we had a wonderful evening whilst the kids splashed around and made friends and we relaxed on bean bags with a mojito.
One error that I made again, which I couldn’t believe after I did the same thing in Phu Quoc, Vietnam…I bathed and dressed the boys for dinner, took them to a beach and had unrealistic expectations that they would stay clean and tidy! So then off I had to go traipsing the streets in search of some dry clothes they could wear for dinner….never forget that change of clothes when going to a beach with kids – lesson most definitely learnt this time!
Arriving on the beach 4pm 
Leaving the beach 9pm
Ao Nui Bay
This was the furthest south we ventured on the island. We organised a taxi to take us from our hotel, they dropped us at the path down to the beach and picked us up from Kantiang Bay (a 10min walk from Ao Nui) later on in the evening which worked well.
Ao Nui is a beautiful, secluded bay set down a path in a cliff. To reach it you have to walk through a little bar built into the cliff with wooden tables and chairs, monkeys swinging through the trees and random chickens walking around squawking. We managed the descent and ascent a lot easier than we initially thought we would, obviously having to let people pass as the little legs were not quick, but the boys did well. We spent an hour on the beach and then went back up for a cold beer and a promise of ice-cream – but there wasn’t any! School boy error, we managed to appease with a shared can of Fanta Orange an addiction that we somehow started on this trip. Oops!
Kantiang Bay
This was an easy 10minute stroll down from the top of the path at Ao Nui, the beach itself is beautiful – long, sandy and quiet. There were a few high-end hotels sat around the beach with nice sun loungers and umbrellas but there didn’t seem to be too much else down there apart from 2 bars at the end. We settled in Why Not Bar on a bean bag however, we didn’t really get the best view of the sunset as it goes down around the bay. The drinks were more expensive that we had paid so far in Koh Lanta as well but it was a nice spot for a drink or 2.
We had received a recommendation from a friend to check out Pad Thai Rock n Roll for, in his words, ‘the best pad thai I had in Thailand’ and he had lived in Thailand for a few months so we decided we needed to check it out. We wandered up the hill and found a small, empty, roadside restaurant and gave it a go. To be fair, he was spot on – the pad thai was delicious and probably the best we had tried, we even ordered more!
Mangrove Kayaking Trip
The only organised trip we did during the 5 days was the Mangrove Kayaking trip. We first kayaked with the boys in Halong Bay in Vietnam and they loved it, so we thought we would try again.
We were collected from our hotel by taxi and taken to the pier for the half day kayaking trip. We were on a longtail boat with 1 other family from Bulgaria. The longtail went out to a tiny island where they dragged some kayaks and we jumped on – Phil and Dylan on one and myself and Elis on another. We first kayaked to a diamond cave and had a look around. Then kayaked around the cliff to another beach where we had some time to swim and look around before kayaking back to the initial location where we had lots of fresh watermelon and pineapple before getting back on the longtail.
The boys love the experience of being on the boat, trying to get us to race – Mummy always lost of course! Looking out for all the wildlife and spotting trolls in the cave, we love to do as much adventuring with them as we can.
On the way back to the pier we went passed ‘monkey island’ where hoards of monkeys ambushed the boat scrambling for some fruit from us. They came so close and the boys were eager to feed them and interact as much as possible, finding it especially hilarious when one monkey jumped on Daddy’s back. The way that the monkeys ran, jumped and swam off the boat also gave us great amusement.
If you enjoyed reading about our time in Koh Lanta then why not have a look at some of the other places we visited in Thailand by going back to our itinerary here. Or click here to go back to our homepage and read about some of our other adventures in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Singapore, the UAE or U.K.
We hope this post has helped you plan your trip to Koh Lanta, please reach out and let us know if we can help in any other ways. You can see highlights of our trip on our Instagram @the_wandering_whites or Tweet us @wanderingwhites where we love getting involved in daily travel chat.
I’ve not heard of Koh Lanta before but it seems a perfect family resort. It’s wonderful the experiences that you are giving the boys, it’s something they will carry with them in the future. I’m sure they loved that kayaking.
Thank you – it is a beautiful island!