Lanta Old Town

This guide to Lanta Old Town opens with a question: what do you do when the very road that connects your island to the world quietly puts your town out of business? It traces back two hundred years to the Chinese traders from Fujian and Hokkien who settled this sheltered channel on Ko Lanta's eastern shore, built a charcoal trade with the mainland, and raised the row of teak shophouses on stilts that still lines the harbor. A fire swept through about sixty years ago, and the town rebuilt in the same wood, on the same posts, facing the same water.