You Me and Tuscany: A visit to Lanta Animal Welfare: Koh Lanta, Thailand

Back in January, I blogged a little bit about our Christmas break down in southern Thailand. You may have read about our Island Tour down in Krabi or our kayaking adventure from Ton Sai bay. Well, the adventures continued for another couple weeks after that! Next, we headed to Koh Lanta, a beautiful Island south of Krabi, and then into Malaysia. There really was so much to share, that I wanted to break our trip down into different posts, but only covered about half our trip (woops). I am finally sitting down to share about the next half of our trip. In all honesty, our trip just continued to get better as time went on, so I am excited to write a few new posts!

In this post I want to specifically talk about an experience we had on Koh Lanta. Visiting Lanta Animal Welfare. We found out about Lanta Animal Welfare while doing some online research about things to do on the island, and once we arrived, we saw some advertisements about a 5km fundraiser race. I'm glad we packed our running shoes, because this ended up being a highlight of our time on the island (who would have thought running 5k in the heat of the day and feeling like I was going to puke would be a highlight?). Aside from the running (which actually wasn't so bad), we were able to learn more about what Lanta Animal Welfare (LAW) does on the island. We ended up coming back the next day for a tour and even were able to take some of the dogs out for a walk!

So, what do they do exactly?

Through no funding other than donations and the profits from Time For Lime (a restaurant/cooking school on the island that was opened by the founder of LAW), they are not just a dog and cat shelter but also a sterilization clinic. Their objective is to "relieve the suffering and pain of the animals on the island through sterilisation and care. To date, we have sterilised and treated over 8,000 animals" (LAW website). When they talk about how far they've come since they opened in the 1970s (I think), it is unbelievable. Thailand has a growing problem with the amount of stray dogs there are, but visiting LAW was like seeing a ray of hope. It was amazing! If you're interested, their website has a wealth of information: http://www.lantaanimalwelfare.com/

After taking part in the fundraiser race, we knew we wanted to come back.

It was actually so easy to get involved...

LAW offers free guided tours of the clinic, twice a day. We literally just showed up and were welcomed right into a tour with just a few other people. They bring you through to see where the animals sleep, play, and even where they operate in the clinic (there was an operation going on at the time we visited). We were introduced to some other full time volunteers, and were able to spend some time petting some of the dogs.

We ended up coming back (yet again!) the next day to take a couple of the dogs for a walk. We were given two medium sized dogs named Brownie and Rolo. Rolo was about a year old and had lots of energy where as Brownie was approximately 3 years old and was much easier to walk. We thought Rolo was at first being skiddish because of Zack being male, so we switched and I walked her instead and he walked Brownie. It didn't make any difference, she was in general just a very skiddish, high energy dog. Though Brownie was easier to walk, they were both affectionate and clearly very happy to be out for a walk. We took them down to the beach, ran with them a bit, and even tried to get a few group photos of the four of us (which proved to be harder than we thought! haha). Overall, we were really happy to get involved with LAW and would recommend a visit here if you ever visit Koh Lanta! They also are in constant need of volunteers, donations, and always have cats and dogs looking for their forever home. It was hard to not take one home, but I know that now isn't the right time for us. Either way, it was a great experience to get involved with this organization while we were on holidays.