Koh Lipe

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We arrived in Satun and got immediatly brought to a travel agency that somehow managed to sell us tickets to a tiny island called Koh Lipe. Unfortunatly the boat of the day had already gone so we had to stay and take the boat of the next day.

It was clearly a new country. I would say I could see the standard dropping exiting the boat. It was a bit hard as I have grown to like Malaysia a lot.

We got a cheap room which smelled of sewer. Just a walk around town to see where things are and get money. It was quite hard to find anything as most signs are in Thai not in English as in Malaysia. And it is the same with the people, they speak not as good English.

Oh well, it rained all night and since we were sleeping on the top floor we could hear it all on the roof.

And the boatride to the island wasn't that great, big waves and sometimes you would think the boat would just sway a bit too much. We arrived 2 hours later just to know that there was no rooms. We hadn't booked early because the only place the travel agent could find was well out of our price.

There was actually no place to stay, probably because of the rain people didn't want to leave and thought they could do it the next day. We ended up getting to sleep in the office on this Bungalow-place run by ladyboys. To be honest, I think it's mandatory to have a ladyboy at every place. Most places got one.

This place as remote as it is was in my eyes extremly overpriced. And thinking in Thailand we could live cheaper than in Malaysia well, I wasn't too happy about it. Thankfully the next day we found the fisherman village where you could get things a bit cheaper.

Lipe is a chillout place, really nothing to do exept the beach. That is a big difference from Malaysia where you do things all the time but in Thailand you just go to the beach. The good thing is that my tan has improved.

We were mainly snorkelling (saw a few blacktipped sharks and the worlds biggest parrotfish and morey eel) just off our beach and also one day we went on a snorkelling trip with 4 stops. It was good, a bit too many jellyfish, only small but they still hurt. The forth stop was in the middle of the sea, and the current was strong. You swim to a place where they have first a yellow coral and then a red/pink coral. You swim slowly to stay in one place just enough to fight the current. I saw 5 BIG jellyfish swimming by, they go by the current and honestly it's quite scary when you get a 60-70 cm big one swouching by. If you don't look for them they might hit you and then you are in big trouble. I quite liked the whole thing, felt like diving. And with my superfins it was no problem fighting the current.

Apart from that we didn't do much, went to a reggie bar and saw some flourecense in the water. Glowing small particles being washed up on land during night.

Koh Lipe was what Thailand should be, really nice beach, really nice coloured water and decent reef. I ended up playing a bit of volleyball, there was a place showing bad movies at night. Nothing much to do apart from that. We met some Australians and this Irish guy Noel who lives in Oz and works as a Journalist. We had a big party the night before he had to go home to his "real" life. Two people passed out at the bar so it must have been a good night.

I must say this far I prefer Malaysia to Thailand. It is more homely and less touristy and people seem more genuine. Here some people see you as an income instead of a person.

After 9 days at Lipe it was time to move on, to Koh Lanta, a "Swedish" island that has boomed with buildings the last couple of years.

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Comments

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Hello
sounds like you didn't have a good welcome to the place. Thailand is beautiful the people are very frinedly and very polite. I find as I go nearer malaysia that standards are droping so was interesting to see your entry. Good luck and enjoy