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Published: January 1st 2013
Looking out towards Koh Adang
It looked swimmable but it probably wasn't ;)This is quite a long blog, so it might be an idea to settle in with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit!
We started this trip with a 12 hour wait in between our flight arriving into Suvarnabhumi airport and our next departing from Don Muang airport…plenty of time to head into the city and get a Thai meal before hopping in a taxi to Don Muang to wait for our onward flight to the far south of Thailand.
The journey to the island Arriving into Hat Yai airport, it wasn’t immediately clear what our transport options onwards were…there were some guys there selling onward minibus and boat tickets for 1000 baht and it seemed a little overpriced, we opted for the minibus to the bus station at 100 baht (£2). Of course, we weren’t taken to the bus station, we were taken to the train station and deposited at a travel agents who listed an array of transport options onwards. Our original plan was to just get to Pakbarra pier and then choose a boat there. However, travel agent man had different ideas and wouldn’t let anyone
book just to the pier, so we just gave in and booked the boat as well for the price of 650 baht (£13) each. This was a BIG mistake but at least we saved 150 baht each which is not to be sniffed at!
The 2 hour minibus drive to the pier was a pretty good journey, the driver wasn’t too crazy and we reached the pier with plenty of time to spare, which meant we could get some supplies in 7-11 and a much needed cornetto! Let us say now, if you are ever offered transportation by Lipeh Speedboat and Travel tours, do not take it! The speedboat ride started off well enough but after our first 20 minute stop (which was just meant to be a drop off) on Koh Tarutao it soon became apparent that the company had combined a day tour of a huge number of Chinese tourists with the regular drop off. Instead of taking an hour and a half at the most, the journey ended up taking just over 3 hours. Adding to the annoyance of the journey taking longer, one of the engines was leaking fuel and we spent the last hour
Chicken fried rice - lunch
we are drooling looking at this! getting high on engine fumes. Apparently this combining the normal boat with a tour group is something a lot of companies do in high season, so if you are doing the journey, it’s best to check beforehand.
Arriving onto the island Instead of the speedboats pulling up to the beach, there were huge arrival and departure pontoons – this is an agreement with the Chao Leh gypsies who ‘own’ the island, so they can still earn a living from the long tail boats. So the speedboats moor at the pontoons and all passengers then had to pay a 20 baht ‘development fee’ and 50 baht for the long tail boat to take them onto their final beach destination. Honestly, when we arrived it was absolute chaos, no-one knew what they were meant to be doing, the Chinese tourists who were on our boat on the tour were pushing and shoving…it was a wonder that luggage and people didn’t end up in the water!
Back in October, for the first time ever, we actually booked our accommodation ahead. We had heard that Koh Lipe got extremely busy and it was a good idea to book and we were
A meeting of the minds ;)
Neil and his mate, Albert glad we did. It was actually nice to not spend 2 hours looking for somewhere to stay (especially after the boat journey took twice as long as it should) so the first thing we did was get changed and legged it down to the beach, where the wind promptly started howling and the rain came. This wasn’t starting well!
On the plus side our room was lovely, the people running the place were very friendly and we even had tea, coffee and a kettle in the room and free water refills. We paid a little more than we usually would for a fan room – it averaged out at just over 1000 baht (£20) but we got hot water which, to us is essential!
Accommodation Koh Lipe is actually the first place we have been at Christmas which significantly raised the room prices. The cheapest price for a fan room with cold water bathroom was 8oo baht (£16), this room was actually a nipa hut, full of holes, dark, damp and with no air getting into the room. The cheapest air con rate on the island was 2,500 baht (£51) – both these rates are significantly higher
Airport Rail Link
Surprisingly deserted! than other islands in Thailand. Fair enough, electricity on the island is expensive as it mostly comes from a central generator but the price of electricity is the same all year round, these places were just capitalising on the fact it was Christmas and people were paying it! Some places on the beach were a ridiculous 5-6000 baht a night (£102-122!) and the rooms weren’t even that nice.
The development/over-development debate Before deciding to visit Koh Lipe, we had read various things about the island being too developed. We would disagree with this but we would say it’s hanging on a bit of a tightrope. The only saving factor we think is that there is a room quota on the island, new rooms are only able to be added to replace existing ones and new development is restricted. However, the island is as developed as it really can be but it has been done in a nice way. On Pattaya beach or Sunrise beach, looking down each one, it’s actually difficult to tell that there are buildings on the beaches. Most of the resorts on Lipe have left the trees intact or have replaced trees they have had
Neil in Don Muang
Brings back some old memories to cut down. As a tiny island though, there is a real pressure on resources – water, electricity etc and we were pleased to see that the place we chose to stay was actually an ‘eco’ resort and it wasn’t just lip service. However, the numbers of people we witnessed arriving over the time we were on the island was staggering. We just hope that the development goes no further, this island is (in our opinion) as developed as it should be.
Food and general prices One of the first things we noticed about Koh Lipe was the prices. We completely understand that as an island which is an hour and a half away from the mainland, things will cost more but what we didn’t count on was the price fixing on the island. Every massage was the same price (more on this in a while), main meals were between 90-110 baht and dishes such as fried rice and pad thai were between 80-100 baht. This is slightly more than we are used to but don’t mind paying out for food (we love food!) as it is still good value
On our first night we ended up
trying 3 restaurants, honestly this wasn’t our intention! The first one we went to, highly recommended on Travelfish website was called Nee Papaya and it was horrendous. It was the blandest tasting food and the smallest portions we have encountered in the whole of Thailand. What completely puzzled us though, was every night we walked past it was packed…not sure what kind of taste buds these people had! Needless to say we were both still hungry and ended up in another restaurant further along the Walking Street which was called Forra Halal, this was marginally better but the portion size was on the small side. We discovered that although a place was priced at the lower end of the price fixing, the portion was accordingly adjusted downwards to around ¾ of what it should be. We don’t actually eat a lot, but it says something when we needed two meals and a pancake and shake to fill us!
This leads us nicely onto the panc-shakes as we nicknamed them. Wow, the banana rotis (pancakes) and banana shakes were out of this world and every afternoon on our way back from the beach we would stop off at our favourite
On the speedboat
The one with the tour group. As you can see by the wrinkled noses, at this point we all started to get high on engine fumes! lady’s stall (exactly opposite the Thai Pancake Lady 1 restaurant) and have an afternoon snack of a pancake and a shake between us. For 70 baht (£1.40) it was a nice treat to have.
In the end we found that the restaurants on Walking Street were more expensive and not as good value as some of the restaurants on the beach. Our favourite restaurant (thanks to
Maisondubonheur for the recommendation) ended up being Zanom Sunrise on Sunrise beach. The portions were good, the price was right and the taste wasn’t toned down. Zanom looked like it should cost a lot more than it does – the staff were really sweet there and we were even give proper table cloths, cloth serviettes and had drinks poured for us! Zanom was actually cheaper than the majority of other restaurants – 90-95 baht (£1.93) for chicken or beef dishes and 110 baht (£2.24) for seafood.
This island is also the first place we have encountered changing prices to suit how busy the place is. One example of this is the massage places. The majority of the massage places were constantly empty, charging 300 baht (£6) for an hour’s massage. One enterprising
place dropped it’s prices to 220 baht, it was packed out when we went to try and get a massage. So we decided to go the next day, the price had then increased to 240 baht…ok, but they were too busy. The next day we tried again, the price was now 260 baht and it was too busy again. We gave up on that place and curiously, the next day the price was again 300 baht, the following day it was 2 people for 500 baht! There was another massage place at Pooh’s restaurant/bungalows/bar/whatever, the sign outside said 1 hour and 15 minutes massage for 300 baht but when we enquired, because it was busy, that offer had ‘finished’ (even though they were still advertising it), they were just trying it on. So we completely gave up on the idea of having a massage at that point as we hate it when places play silly buggers with their prices!
The last point to note was the prices in the shops…bloody hell these were all over the place! One place was selling a big bottle of Leo beer for 65 baht (£1.32), another was selling it for 85 baht (£1.73).
Cans of pop, usually 14 baht in 7-11’s were 30 baht and crisps which are usually 20 baht were anything from 35-45 baht. The cold drinks we understand the mark up in price because electricity is more expensive to keep them chilled and they are heavier to transport, but a packet of crisps? Luckily we don’t snack much between meals, so we didn’t actually have to buy much from the shops.
The Thai and Chao Leh people on the island Koh Lipe is made up of a mixture of the Chao Leh gypsies who own the island and Thai’s who have moved there. We have to say the local people working on the island were some of the friendliest we have encountered in the whole of Thailand. It really took us back to the old Thailand, where the name ‘Land of Smiles’ came from; we lost count of the number of genuinely happy smiles we received and we were constantly amazed at how happy locals on the island were. There were no hassles, no touts, no vendors on the beach…sometimes the locals were a little too laid back when it came to attracting customers!
As an example
Look closely at the guy in the background
nice speedos! We really only took this pic to get one of the guy behind. of places being a little too laid back - we gave Forra Halal another try for Neil to have a breakfast. It was a hilarious experience – when we went in there at 11am, it looked like the entire staff had just woken up (their hair was sticking up at all angles and they were still in their pyjamas). We ordered, the waitress couldn’t understand what we wanted so she drafted in the help of a friend. The coffee was delivered and it was like treacle - seriously, even 15 packs of coffee mate wouldn’t have made a difference to the colour or strength! Then the scrambled eggs arrived with two slices of ‘toast’ which had barely been shown to a grill. The rest of the breakfast (ham, sausage, baked beans, fruit salad) was mysteriously missing. When the staff went back to sleep with their heads on a table, we realised the rest of the meal wasn’t coming, so Neil went over and explained they got the order wrong. It was quickly rectified with a still frozen in the middle, weird looking sausage, dodgy tasting ham, a small bowl of beans and a huge fruit salad. Weird!
Beach etiquette and the types of tourists on the island
Firstly, we want to say how nice the many beaches are on this little island...one for almost every position of the sun (sunrise, sunset beach etc), you really are spoilt for choice as to where to lay or swim for the day. This brings us to our main observations for this blog, the types of tourist and what we observed people watching. The tourists can be broadly split into Asian tourists, European/British/Australians on a two week holiday and backpackers.
The Asian tourists are mostly Malays, Singaporeans and increasingly, Chinese mainlanders. We definitely like this in a beach resort, however, one thing we would say about the huge number of Chinese tourists (we think travel agents are selling package deals) is that Lipe isn’t really geared up to handle ‘Chinese style’ tourism. What we mean by this is something we have witnessed first-hand in other parts of Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Chinese tourists tend to holiday with their whole family, so you get groups of 20-30 people, all moving together en masse around the resort, going to restaurants together and into shops all at once. Chinese tourists also seem
to have quite a short attention span, for instance on day trips they seem happy to stop at a place for 5 minutes, take pictures and then leave. We were unlucky enough to meet two groups (20+ in each) of Chinese tourists on the Walking Street one after the other…seriously it was like we were back in China being pushed, shoved, deafened from all angles. Only a banana shake would take away the trauma 😉
The European tourists were made up of Scandinavians, French and Germans. We heard some British voices and quite a few Aussies as well. Something that surprised us, considering it’s a relatively hard place to get to, was how many families were on the island. We know this is a sweeping generalisation but the majority of these families were really annoying and very, very rude. They were the types who, on a path which is wide enough for 4 people, two adults would stand side by side and have their pram blocking the rest of the path with their kids running around tripping people up. When asked to (politely) move, they would give the people wanting to pass on the path dirty looks and start
Our fave pancake lady's menu!
She did the best banana shakes too! slagging them off! Or they would just barge into people on the path, completely not looking where they were going. The other annoying thing was the number of children who were just left to run out of control, screaming, knocking things over, knocking into people while they were eating in restaurants with their parents ignoring them completely. We actually witnessed kids no older than 4 years old just being left to play by themselves in the sea while their parents sat in a restaurant (quite a good distance away), we found it completely shocking that parents would leave children this young alone in the water.
We have mentioned in other blogs we have written about people going on holiday to Thailand or other parts of Asia and only eating Western food. Again, we lost count of the number of times we passed restaurants with tables full of Europeans, British or Australians were ordering burgers, chips and pizzas in restaurants which had mostly Western food on the menu. The other shocking thing we noticed was how many people in restaurants were drinking bottles of wine with their meals - the reason why we were shocked is because Thailand is not
Neil and a little girl...
Neil needed directions as Donna was being useless as usual really the place to get good value or good quality wine. The cheapest bottle of wine we saw on a menu was 1200 baht (£24!) and it was a pretty crappy bottle of wine as well!
To follow on from this, the highest rated ‘restaurant’ on TripAdvisor for Koh Lipe is an Italian gelato place which charges a ridiculous amount of money for one tiny scoop of gelato – almost 90 baht a scoop (£1.83), but this scoop was about 3 tiny spoonfuls. The number of people crowded into that place was unbelievable, the same as the ‘French crepe’ place opposite which charged 120 baht (£2.44) for a pancake – the traditional Thai pancakes/rotis were around 30 baht! We just couldn’t believe our eyes at the queues for these French crepes, Italian gelato, 100 baht pizza slices (not even a quarter of a small pizza) and the 100 baht kebab. We were lead to believe there is a recession in Europe and the UK…not from what we have seen how people are spending money! We also couldn’t believe the Elephant café, which, apart from exorbitant prices on their menu for the majority of items, boasted that they only used
Taxi!
long tails as taxi boats...those drivers seriously made some money at 50 baht per person per trip! distilled water in their cooking. Implying that other restaurants were unhygienic and unclean - let’s just say it now…ALL restaurants use distilled water in their cooking, Elephant café is no different but somehow tourists fell for their spiel on the menu and the place was packed every day! We will say this again, we do not understand spending money to fly all the way to Thailand on a holiday to only eat what you eat at home…it’s bonkers mental! Don’t even get us started on that OMG bar place which is trying to set a trend of extremely loud late night music on this small island. Very annoying to almost everyone but the few full moon rave party tourists on the island (which were very few)…there is a place for this crap but Koh Lipe is not it and is all the better without it.
You are probably wondering what we mean by beach etiquette in the title of this section. This is something we are keenly aware of when we travel to different places. You do not place yourselves too close to other people on the beach, you do not enter the sea and stand two steps away
Walking Street
well it was only Walking Street at night during the day bikes were allowed from other people trying to eavesdrop on their conversations or perve on their tits and arse! We lost count of the number of times people came and sat no more than 2 feet away from us on the beach, so close we were sprayed with their stupid spray on suntan lotion (seriously, what’s wrong with squeezing it from a bottle, why do you have to spray it over us as well?!). The same as when we were in the sea, people just came and stood right next to us trying to listen to our conversation! The only plausible explanations we can think of is that people are trying to figure out what nationality we are (apparently we are difficult to guess) or they are trying to make friends? Who knows, but it’s mightily annoying. Beach etiquette also extends to the fact bikinis and speedos should be kept on the beach – if you want to walk through a village, please, please, please do not do it in your bikini with your tits and arse hanging out. You certainly should not sit in a restaurant in just your bikini or speedos!
People watching on Lipe was excellent, we started to
wonder if there was something in the water after we witnessed no fewer than 8 different couples arguing. The women crying, the guys storming off into the sea/down the beach/wherever and the women left behind with wobbling lips and rivalling Claire Danes with their cryfaces! We have a theory about these arguing couples – it’s kind of the culture in the UK/Europe/Australia to work so hard and build up to one huge holiday a year. When the big holiday finally comes around, these couples are under so much pressure to have a good time, they aren’t used to spending that much time together, they are missing their families (especially as it was Christmas) and everything comes to a huge and very public head. Screaming at each other on the beach, lips wobbling, tears streaming down the cheeks and storming off in a huff. Oh dear…as we said, excellent people watching 😉
General points and our Christmas celebrations Every day on Koh Lipe at 6pm, there was a test of tsunami warning system – we were glad to hear this as it’s the only place on the Andaman coast we have been to since the tsunami which seems to
have a proper working warning system. It’s only sensible though with the proximity of Sumatra and
THE fault line!
We debated about going on a snorkelling trip or just hiring gear and snorkelling off the beach. We finally decided (mostly due to Donna’s squeamishness about long tail boats) to snorkel off the beach and we were very happy with the decision. We actually saw a lot of coral, a variety of fish, seahorses, loads of Nemo’s and even saw some pretty rare Christmas tree worms!
Christmas Eve we wanted to have a drink but begrudged spending 110 baht (£2.24) a beer in a restaurant/bar we liked the look of so we headed to a supermarket and got a big bottle of Leo for 65 baht (£1.32) and a Spy wine cooler for 40 baht (£0.81) and went and sat on the beach with the other chavs drinking 😉 It was great! Another thing we noticed was several signs in shops saying the Chinese lanterns were banned on the island – we presume this is due to the danger of a lit one landing in a part of the national park and causing a fire but don’t know for
sure.
Lipe was home to a lot of friendly dogs which reminded us of Dug the dog from the film Up…when we were running on the beach they would run along with us, just wanting to be our friend. Although they didn’t like the man running in speedos and tried to bite him; we couldn’t blame them, it wasn’t a pretty sight! Our Christmas day was lovely, we spent it eating lovely Thai food, lazing on the beach and in the sea – we couldn’t have asked for a nicer day or better company.
Back to Bangkok Learning our lesson from the journey to the island, we carefully chose the company to take us back to Had Yai airport. The only real incident was an Italian woman shrieking and shouting at the Thai boat man about wanting to get on the boat first with her children as she couldn’t possibly sit anywhere other than the front. She completely humiliated the Thai boat man and made him lose face and subsequently got nowhere with her ‘request’. We kind of squirmed uncomfortably watching the situation, both side handled it badly. We reached Pakbarra pier and Donna legged it to
Thai Pancake Lady 2 restaurant
can you guess what most of the menu was? 7-11 to get…cornettos. Standing there eating the cornettos we found out our van driver had an irrational hatred of ice cream when he pronounced we couldn’t eat them in his van, we scoffed them fast and were then really annoyed to see a Thai guy eating ice cream in the front seat next to the driver. It was funny though seeing the driver twitch every time it looked like a piece of ice cream might drop off the stick and we were secretly hoping it would just to see what the driver would do!
Had Yai airport is actually pretty good, there are plenty of coffee places and a few restaurants to eat. It was such a pleasure to be in an airport which didn’t have ridiculous security rules and was actually peaceful with no pushing and shoving to get on a plane (yes, we are looking at YOU, Philippines airports!). Arriving into Don Muang airport, however, wasn’t such a pleasant experience. There isn’t really any public transport to and from the airport, so the taxi lines were ridiculously long – as in it took close to 45 minutes to even get to the front of the queue to
get a taxi. All in all from landing to arrival into our hotel on Sukhumvit Road, it took 2 hours (and we didn’t even have luggage to collect!).
We spent a day shopping until we dropped in Bangkok and managed to squeeze in 4 meals in a little over 24 hours! As usual we were really sad to leave Thailand (and the food) but we were leaving with the knowledge we will be back there in 9 weeks’ time when Donna’s parents join us for our next adventure in Thailand!
Here’s to 2013 bringing plenty more travelling and we are now going into our 7th year away from the UK – how time flies!
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Tallgay
non-member comment
What is it with the certain group that pushes and shoves others? I lived in Beijing for a year and was pushed on average 30 times a day. I learned to push back.