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Published: February 18th 2008
The four S's (Stan, Sheila, Sharon, and Scott that is) have met again, this time on the island of Ko Lipe in Southern Thailand. After leaving the UK to move to America, I've met up with mum and dad at various locations around the world. It's becoming a habit:
Easter 2003 - USA/California
Summer 2004 - UK
Sept 2005 - Bali wedding, Indonesia
Feb 2006 - Langkawi, Malaysia
Xmas 2006 - Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
Aug 2007 - Malaysia (Tioman and Taman Negara)
Feb 2008 - Ko Lipe, Thailand (now!)
It seems we've become quite the travelling family! We were supposed to be able to add Egypt to the list, too, but mum and dad had to cancel at the last minute, just 12 hours before departure.
We arrived on the island of Ko Lipe the night before mum and dad arrived and spent quite some time looking for accommodation. The response was always the same, "full!" Finally, we found a place, but not on the main beach as we'd wanted, but we took it for a night and headed to the beach for a quick dip in the ocean. We followed this by a meal at one
of our favourite restaurants from 2 years ago, Banana Tree. It used to be set fairly on its own on the dirt path running between the two main beaches. Now, however, the whole path is full of restaurants, bers, and massage parlours - I guess you can't stop progress!
The next morning, we trekked around and soon found two rooms on the "correct" beach. We spent the rest of the morning on the beach keeping an eye out for mum and dad's ferry arriving. Finally, it rolled in two hours late, as ours had been, and we watched as everyone transferred into long tail boats top bring them to shore. Several sped to various parts of the long beach but luckily their's pulled in directly in front of us! We took them to check into the room before all heading to the beach for a well-earned swim in the sea (they'd been travelling for 49 hours!) and some catching up.
That night, something happened that had not happened since January 3rd - it rained. But it didn't just rain. In true tropical style, it poured. Luckily, we were in a restaurant at the time, so there was only
one thing for it - we hunkered down with another Chang beer and watched as multiple waterfalls formed on the currugated iron roof. Luckily, it stopped after an hour and we didn't see a drop of rain for the rest of their trip.
We spent eight nights altogether on Lipe. The first four were at Lipe Resort until we got kicked out as they were fully booked for Chinese New Year. We them moved to what looked like two lovely concrete, modern bungalows. Everything was brand new and
looked lovely. Upon moving in, however, we discovered two major downfalls. First, being concrete instead of the traditional wood and thatch, they held in the heat and were like little firnaces day and night. Second, the beds were rock solid. After our first sleepless night, Scott and i solved the problem somewhat by donating half of the clothes in our backpack to lay on the bed for extra padding. Mum and dad took the more civilized option of using folded up blankets and towels. It worked OK until we rolled off the padding in the middle of the night onto the rock hard mattress. We actually ended up with yellow bruises
on our hipos by the end of our four day stay there - now
that's a hard mattress!
Despite the dodgy, overpriced accommodation and the laments of people on Ko Kraden than Lipe was "overdeveloped" and "overcrowded", we all still really liked the island. It has the right balance of enough development to provide some low-key nightlife, but still retains its tropical paradise feel. The great thing about Lipe is that it has so many beaches to choose from: the main beach of Pattaya, Sunset Beach, "Bonfire Beach" (named by us because of the frequent rubbish-burnign sessions), "Ant Beach" (because we went after the rains and it was full of ants), and "Secret Beach" (because it's hard to find) to name but a few. We spent several days just exploring the beaches and the offshore snorkelling. We also did two snorkel trips. The first was fantastic, with sites with pink and orange coral fans and rocks blanketed with soft corals of every color of the rainbow. The second should have been great, too, bot for some reason visibility was bad so it was difficult to see much under the water at all. You win some, you lose some!
Nights were spent eating dinner at one of the beachfront restaurants, then drinking a Chang while watching the odd fire show or live band at one of the driftwood beach bars. I also had my birthday on the island. It just happened to fall on Super Tuesday, the big US election day to vote for the Democratic and Republcan candidates for president, so Scott and I watched that all morning (I know, sad!) before joining up with my parents on the beach. At night, they took us to an Italian-run restaurant for a rare weatern treat - pizza! You really can get quite tired of rice and noodles!!!
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Andi
non-member comment
Lipe Resort
Hey hey. Hasn't Lipe Resort changed! We stayed in the cute, cheap fan rooms with 24 hour electric and giggled every time someone else in a more expensive a/c room complained that their electricity went off at 6am - sometimes there is justice. This time last year we were just setting off : (