Island Hopping in Thailand - Starring: Koh Lipe
Trip dates: November 27, 2016 - December 2, 2016
When researching our trip, we knew we wanted to visit some of the islands around Thailand but not ones that Lishan had already been to (Koh Samui and Koh Tao). There are soo many islands around with many different qualities, but we decided on Koh Lipe and Koh Chang as the two we wanted to visit, with a stopover in Bangkok in the middle.
Koh Lipe would be our first stop in Thailand and it was the smaller/less developed island, being that it only became a more popular tourist destination over the past 5-10 years. Here's some maps to give some perspective of where this tiny island fits into the larger geography of the region.
Koh Lipe isn't even on the map here!
OK, now that you know roughly where in the region we are, let's zoom in a bit...
Ohhh I see it now
So, one of the fun parts of getting to Koh Lipe is getting in and out of the island since it's so small. There are two major routes in/out of the island and we took both of them on entry and exit.
On the way in, we started our travels in Thailand by going to... Malaysia! Langkawi is a much bigger island on the Malaysia side that has an airport plus a couple different speed boat routes to Koh Lipe. We flew into Langkawi from Singapore and took a taxi to Kuah, where our ferry would be leaving the next day. We just wandered the island for food and saw some local sights (giant eagle and monkeys). Pics below!
The food we had here was the last of our Malaysian meals, which basically was kinda Chinese in nature with some local accents. The majority of our dishes came from a restaurant block that seemed to be frequented only by locals and we got a whole fish paid by weight.
The next morning bright and early, we headed out for Koh Lipe! I'm glossing over some of the shambles hurry-up-and-wait that is a pretty standard theme for traveling in a group in SE Asia, as this actually wasn't too bad and I'm sure I'll whinge about it in a later post in another area.
The speed boat from Kuah Jetty on Langkawi brings you to the west part of Koh Lipe, Pattaya Beach, where you get to a little floating platform, where you then get transferred to a longtail boat, which takes you to the beach where you jump off into the warm water! Hope you didn't wear shoes, oh silly other travelers. We knew this ahead of time and wore flip flops in preparation. Also a good time to not have a wheeled suitcase since you're on the beach.
After going through immigration, we got loaded up into a truck with an open back to head towards our hotel. The roads are pretty bumpy and rough; infrastructure is pretty simple on the island. The only smooth paved street is a 'walking street', which is also full of tuk-tuks and scooters.
We chose our hotel, Cabana Lipe, because it was on a quieter part of the more popular Sunrise Beach on the east side of the island. This also meant that the two ways to access it were from the beach or through the back-roads through the local sea gypsy's land. We ended up parking the truck and walking through some local neighborhoods which were quite local and not geared for tourists. We took the beach path the rest of our time here except for our final departure because there were no signs and every local block pretty much looked the same.
As soon as we got our stuff dropped in the hotel room, we went to check out the beach and walking street! The day we arrived was actually the best weather we had the whole time we were there, but unfortunately we didn't take a ton of photos.
The Sunrise Beach sand wasn't actually the softest sand - some parts were, but a lot were pretty coarse and not as pleasant to walk through. In contrast, Pattaya Beach had some really soft sand but it had a ton of boat traffic so there were less areas to swim in.
We were so happy with our first Thai meal! We eat a fair amount of Thai food at home, both cooking ourselves as well as restaurants, so Thai food is pretty high on our list of comfort foods. It was pretty cheap and tasty and we also got the first of many fruit shakes we would have in our time in SE Asia. It was also the first of many, many Som Tum (papaya salad) dishes we would have over the next few weeks (Lishan's fave).
Massages were also being offered everywhere (common in Thailand). They are a little more expensive here than in other places we would see in Thailand, coming in at 300 bhat (around $9 USD) for an hour.
Our first night on the island was... interesting. We had gone back to the hotel then back to the walking street to look into diving prices, when a sudden thunderstorm came in. We needed to walk 15 minutes back to the beach before getting near our hotel, so the storm was in full form by the time we got to the beach and we were already soaked. Unluckily for us with the storm, the water was at high tide with pretty large waves breaking on buildings that were right at the edge of the beach. We felt that it was pretty unsafe to try and cross the water at that point and tried figuring out ways to get around the beach, but just got soaked wandering around while trying to protect our phones. In the end, we decided on waiting out the storm under some shelter before we crossed the still high-tide beach area but with much gentler waves coming in.
We learned a few valuable lessons that first night:
- Bring a flashlight/headlamp with us at all times on the island. Night drops fast and there were many places with no lighting.
- We ended up buying water resistant pouches for our phones in case of rain or accidental water exposure. Our day bags aren't waterproof so we figured these cases will come in handy for the rest of our trip too.
- Trust our judgement and be patient. We felt it was unsafe, so we didn't act rashly by trying to rush past the beach and high tide. Maybe we would have been fine crossing with the waves, but we both felt better waiting. The crossing later was pretty simple and didn't really cost us anything.
With our first adventure out of the way, we ended up doing an afternoon snorkeling trip with a beach dinner & night plankton viewing the next night in addition to a 3-dive day trip the day after. The last day was meant to be a beach day, but we ended up getting rain on our last day and a half on the island so those days were more chill.
The snorkel trip was quite interesting. Basically we paid, showed up at a store, tried on some flippers, got a mask, then were tossed on a boat. When we reached a snorkel site, they'd basically just gesture to the water and in you go! No check on who can swim, just basically get off the boat. Good thing we don't have any problems with swimming and have snorkeled and dived many times previously. Overall though, the sites were just OK, nothing super amazing. A couple thoughts:
- The first snorkel site had one of the strongest currents I've ever been in and it was a real struggle to swim more than a few meters at a time. This also made the water very murky and visibility wasn't great. Luckily, there was a series of ropes tied to anchors and buoys that you could pull yourself along on them to see the reef, but we only spent a short amount of time here.
- After going to another few spots, we went to a beach to watch the sunset and have our dinner. It seemed like it was going to be cloudy, but ended up being a pretty nice sunset. Food was basic fare (rice + a protein + veggies) but tasted good and we had some fruit for dessert.
- The plankton part of the trip was not what we were expecting. Turns out, the plankton are just present in parts of the water, and you have to flap your arms and legs around and the movement makes them light up. You can't see it on camera, but it was pretty cool to see them in the water.
- What wasn't cool about the plankton was when we found some - basically our driver stopped the boat, said the plankton were out there, turned off the light on the boat, and just said jump in! It was very dark with choppy waters, so it was pretty hard to float and check out the plankton because of all of those factors - you didn't want to end up being too far out of reach of the boat! It might have been nicer if we had something to hold onto but it still ended up being a pretty unique experience.
The next day after snorkeling, we were back in the water for a 3-dive day.
- The dive crew we went with were all very professional and the equipment was generally good. The boat was the best part because they had a rooftop sun deck that we hung out on between dives.
- Otherwise, we saw a ton of moray eels, lionfish, parrot fish, trigger fish, urchins galore and a few stone fish that literally looked like big rocks. Of course, our last dive had the best close-ups of the marine life and I didn't bring my GoPro for that one!
Our last day, we woke up early to check out the sun rise at the southern tip of the island. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy and the sunrise itself wasn't great, but it was nice to have a strip of beach all to ourselves for awhile. We also made friends with one of the many strays there and were entertained by him frolicking around. On the way back, we also saw a gaggle of puppies running around that we played with!
For being an island with limited resources, food wasn't too expensive. There was an abundance of pancakes (basically egg and fried dough with fruit and other sweets put on top) and fruit shakes, as well as other standard Thai fare and seafood.
Leaving Koh Lipe, we followed the other major path out. We again went to the west side (Pattaya Beach), took a bigger speed boat to Pakbara Pier in Thailand, then transferred to a mini bus (after wandering around the pier), which took us to the Hat Yai airport to then fly to Bangkok (DMK airport). Phew, that's a mouthful. Luckily, we booked this one through AirAsia as one combined ticket from Koh Lipe to Bangkok, which was super convenient and included all the intermediary transfers. We just followed red Air Asia flags around to know where to transfer.
Bangkok is coming up next! Food separate from travels as there's a lot of content otherwise. Be sure to read Lishan's Ayutthaya post (a day trip from Bangkok) if you haven't read it already.
