Blogs from Ko Lipe, South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 9

Funny how none of the travel brochures show you sweating your ass of in a room with no fan or AC with a lone vicious mosquito as company. Being hounded awake by a whine in your ear as your slipping off into a gentle sleep has got to rank in the top 10 of "Truly annoying experiences". I guess that wouldn't be a very good sales pitch though. None the less these are all some of the perils you face as you slide from chaos into bliss. Ah the rigors of travel. Our entry point into Thailand turned out be a ferry ride across from Langkawi (Malaysia) to Ko Lipe in which we we hung out at a bar while our passports were stamped! Yup, no waiting in lines, no questions, and thank god no dealing ... read more

Thinking back to this day it was a bit of an uneventful day. What i mean by that is I got up nice and early, went for a walk the sun was shining. Sunbathed and swam in the clear blue sea most of the day. Spent a bit of time with Sarah and Chris. Decided we'd do a snorkling trip the next day so we booked that and went for a bit of a pre-snorkle in the waters off pattaya beach. I took Them to jungle bar for lunch after i told them ho much i enjoyed my dinner the previous day. After their meal they agreed that that was the best thai curry they have ever had! Went for my second thai massage on the beach at 5pm which was sooooo good. As agreed ... read more

From Luang Prabang (Laos) we flew to Bangkok (Thailand). We’d heard that the journey to northern Thailand via the river was a long, uncomfortable and hard journey, so we thought we’d miss that experience! We’ve already endured long slow boat journeys, sitting on hard wooden bench seats for hours on end. If you are a traveller in search of beauty and tranquility; don’t go to Ko Phi Phi, head for Ko Lipe!! Read below. Bangkok We did the usual in Bangkok, stayed in Rambuttri Village Hotel and spent time wondering the air-con shopping centres, absorbed the backpackers atmosphere on Khao San Road and relaxed by the hotel pool. From Bangkok we headed south to Krabi on an over night bus. This was fine, but we were dropped off at the ferry port, which we hadn’t anticipated. ... read more

The first thing that I noticed as our ferry arrived at Koh Lipe was the clarity of the water. Even though we were anchored off shore awaiting a long tail boat to pick us up, we could see every rock and fish that was below the surface. At each of the three beaches on this island, the water is so clear that you can actually make out the individual grains of sand beneath your feet. Added to this, every day the weather was idyllic for such a location - warm, clear skies and a gentle breeze. We spent our days at beautiful Koh Lipe either swimming, reading on the beach, dozing on the beach or eating beautiful food. We stayed the first two nights at Sunlight Beach, which was always calm in the afternoon with shade ... read more

Ko Lipe isn't the place you'd want to arrive without money. Banks or ATMs haven't arrived yet and the moneychangers aren't generous. With that in mind we ended Langkawi with a mad evening rush round trying to find a moneychanger and repeatedly being thwarted by minutes, including a failed dash to the airport before it closed following the last flight in. Not a problem, we discovered a bank with a moneychanger would be open at Telaga Harbour the following morning, from where our speedboat would be leaving. After three customers in the morning the bank had run out of Thai Baht. Tom was in line with our money fourth. If I was the sort of person who went round telling banks how to do their jobs I'd put forward the crazy idea to carry a little ... read more