Boat to Koh Lipe

Our last morning on Koh Lanta started with the heaviest rain experienced to date, so I was thankful today would be a travel day. I walked to the gym for a quick workout in the pouring rain and after running 30 minutes on the crappiest treadmill in Koh Lanta, walked back in what was now torrential rain with "Raindrops keep pouring on my head" on repeat in my mind. I turned up like a drowned rat on the doorstep of our room where Jamie asked "Did you forget your umbrella?". Nothing gets past Captain Obvious.

We had a quick breakfast, where I made a sneaky takeaway marmite and cheese sandwich to take on the boat. You may be wondering how does a small resort on a Koh Lanta come to acquire the NZ black gold known as Marmite? I may or may not have been carrying around a small jar of NZ marmite for our entire journey. Priorities. Teddy bears were hurt in that decision making process.

Anyway, with my Marmite and Cheese sammie in hand, we made our way in the back of a pick up to the ferry terminal and jumped on our boat which would take as all the way to Koh Lipe, a small Thai island on the Thai/Malay border where we will stay a couple of days before heading to our first Malaysian stop of Langkawi.

The boat was suitable enough and more importantly big enough to handle the forecasted choppiness. Not spending a huge amount of time on boats in my earlier years has lead to me not really being able to handle the sea and its motions. Only time will tell how successful this trip will be.

2.5 hours in and I was feeling a bit quesy but nothing too sinister which was helped by having four seats to myself where I could lie down and be soothed by Teemu, who by this stage was missing his Scandanavian breakfasts and friends.

Just after 4.30, and 6 hours into our journey, we arrived at Koh Lipe. We disembarked our boat onto a floating jetty 150m off shore, where we had to pay a national park fee before we had to pay another fee for a long boat to take us to shore. This angered most people as we had already paid a significant sum to get us to Koh Lipe, but the choice was to pay or swim. They had us cornered.

Once onshore, we found a taxi and got taken to our hotel, and made the most of the remaining daylight hours by goimg for a snorkel. Apparently Koh Lipe has 25% of the worlds tropical fish surrounding the island, and I planned to hang out with my fishy friends and see all of them.

For dinner, we made our way into the walking street (a street transecting most of the island with shops and restaurants) and settled on Indian for dinner, which was probably the most delicious Indian I have had in awhile. We walked back to the hotel where we sat on the beach enjoying the stars in the clear black sky and the lightning over mainland Malaysia in the distance.Read more