Koh Lipe, Thailand

We spent 11 glorious days on this tiny island in between finishing our teaching contracts and our flight to Europe. We didn’t want to spend all that time hanging around Korea…we would’ve spent more money doing that (if that’s any indication of what a bargain it is to take a trip to Thailand!) on top of having to sleep on the couches of friends. No thank you. There aren’t many places to which I’d want to go back, but Koh Lipe is one of them.

Original post 4/1/2014

We flew to Langkawi, Malaysia (northern west coast of Malaysia) for one night, then caught the ferry to Koh Lipe, Thailand (southern west coast of Thailand) the following day to spent 11 days lounging on one of those beaches you see only on postcards or calendars. Immigration was a concrete building with a palm-thatched roof and getting stamped and through customs took place right there on the sand. The entire island is walkable so we just walked to the other side where our bungalow was waiting for us. It was concrete, basic, stifling hot, had no air conditioning or hot water…but it did have a hammock and was about 15 steps from the most turquoise water I’ve ever seen.

Al under the mosquito net

It looks much dingier than it actually was. It was squeaky clean.

We soon got into the routine of doing absolutely nothing. Wake up, coffee (for Al) and tea (for me), beach, lunch, hammock book reading, beach, dinner, sleep. Not always in that order, but mostly what the days consisted of. Once we took a walk up into the jungly mountain part, where some of the local people live and on the way was a temple:

I. Love. Snorkeling. There’s so much going on under there.

Sup Nemo

Parked on this beach to have our lunch

One of our boat drivers

Stopped at a different island that had swings all over the place…

…And tree limbs…

…that someone had put pretty corals on.

One evening, I saw the sickest sunset I’ve ever seen in my life. Never, ever, ever have I seen anything like it. So Lion King.

We arrived at the sunset beach and I was like so pretty! Little did I know what was coming.

Starts peeking under the clouds…

omg…

OMG!!

This is not real.

:-O

NAAAAAAAASOWHENYAAAAAHHH MAMABEATSEBABAAAAHH

We ate some good food…

Coconut banana pancake

Coffee, Thai milk tea and fruit (obviously)

Breakfast

Tom Kha. Kind of like a coconut lemongrass soup with lime leaves, bamboo shoots, chicken and veggies.

We even found some kitties! The path from our bungalow to the main walking street had a dump pile of roof metal and one night we walked by and there were kittens in it! So each night we would look for them on our way to dinner and play with them.

Every restaurant or store is open air

Seems legit

This little kid stopped outside our bungalow and just played with the plants

When I get the settings right, my camera is capable of amazing things!

The main walking street…before I got a tan

The tide went down really low one night

Nuts.

Love this picture

This was about as crowded as the water got with people swimming

Shake and pancake stand

As our week and a half was coming to a close, we decided to use our last night for a movie. SE Asia is famous for “TV bars” I guess you could call them. They have TVs and cushions and pillows all over and they play movies and shows all day and night. We got some fries, picked some pillows and watched “Get Him to the Greek.”