Even though Koh Lipe is really beautiful, it gets boring relatively quickly – at least if you’re not busy with touring and diving all the time, which is why we were glad to come back to a bigger island. In addition, we had the turn of the year in the house and we were really curious how that will happen in Thailand.
After our arrival by ferry, it was about 20 minutes with a tuk-tuk to our hotel, where we had rented in a bamboo beach bungalow. Unfortunately we were so early that we had to wait about an hour with a coconut on the beach. Such a crap 
And the manager of the hotel is just cute. Even for Thai standards, where it is really difficult to meet unsympathetic people, she was simply the absolute hammer. Her favorite phrase: “Relax at the beach, I call you when it’s ready”. You could have hugged her every time we asked her for anything, washing clothes, scooter rentals, boat bookings, or when she helped us out with Tobi’s lost credit card. The credit card has gone missing (presumably eaten by some ATM), but that was only half as bad in the end.
Koh Lanta itself we explored again with a rented scooter. The island has some beautiful, if not overly spectacular, beaches to offer. Therefore, our personal highlight was the visit of the mangrove forest in the east of the island. Not necessarily because of the mangroves, which we have admired in the meantime quite often, but because of the large number of crabs, which make themselves comfortable here and at low tide are great to watch. Some hermit crabs and the crayfish with only one, but huge scissors did it to us particularly. We even saw a short fight between two particularly large specimens! The national park Koh Lantas and its “Jungle Walk” is unfortunately very unspectacular, but you pay the entrance fee for nature conservation. Although it was late on the way back, we still wanted to make a short detour to a somewhat remote waterfall. We had to turn around after 20 minutes because otherwise we would not have made it out of the jungle before dark, but on the way we spotted a sleeping snake in a tree just a few meters away. A bit queasy at the thought that even sit directly over one (and fall in doubt) could
And then there was still New Year’s Eve … We spent the evening (with incredibly loud music) in a beach bar, then smuggled us to the party of a resort at midnight to the quite remarkable, but compared to Germany very short, fireworks over the larger City of Koh Lantas. In addition to the fireworks, there is a steady stream of light balloons throughout the evening, which are now banned in Germany for good reason. It is impressive anyway! After this spectacle back in the bungalow, we enjoyed ourselves until early in the morning at the club music. The loudest beach club was right behind our bathroom party 
In this sense, “Happy new year”