You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back.
Paul Theroux
Greetings from the year 2566: the weather is warm, the beers are cold, and neither monkeys nor machines rule the planet (yet).
Thailand marks time according to the Buddhist Era, which started when Gautama Buddha passed away having achieved nirvana. The days, weeks and months line up in a reassuringly familiar way but according to the Thai calendar Jesus was actually a bit of a Johnny-come-lately and only arrived on the scene in the year 543.
Timeshifting forward several hundred years wasn’t the only adjustment required when we arrived in Thailand: the change of gears from meandering low-key gently beguiling Indonesia to lights-camera-action-bang-flash-whoa Thailand would have had Michael Schumacher struggling with his gearbox; it had us bunnyhopping down the highway like learner drivers in a stolen car.
The ferry to Koh Lipe drops you on a white sandy beach with water so turquoisey clear that you feel like you’re stepping into a postcard. From the beach you’re funnelled into the Walking Street – Koh Lipe’s main road – and reality hits. Marijuana is legal in Thailand and the Walking Street is lined with ganja shops and neon bars selling buckets of beer to slack-jawed and sunburnt tourists. The music is pumping, the hawkers are jostling, the hubbub is disorienting and confronting. If you’ve just hopped off the boat from Indonesia, around about now you’re questioning your life choices and checking the timetable for the next ferry out of here.
The good news is, it’s just a change of pace. It took five minutes to arrive at our hotel, ten to find our hut and drop our bags, and five more to find the beach bar. The first Thaijito (Thai rum, lime, ginger, crushed ice) with our toes in the sand and Finn happily splashing in the sea took the edge off the culture shock; by the second, recalibration was complete. This was going to be a good week.
Koh Lipe is about the same size as Manly: you can walk across it in half an hour, and its three main beaches (Pattaya, Sunrise and Sunset) are all within 15 minutes’ walk of each other. There are several larger islands within easy kayaking distance but only Koh Lipe is inhabited: the others are national parks and only day trippers are allowed. We spent several days kayaking, island hopping and snorkelling around the islands.
It’s a picture perfect postcard island but there is a lot of rubbish: in the sea, on the beach and around the interior. Some resorts such as ours (Castaway on Sunrise Beach) regularly clean their stretch of beachfront; others are less fussed, and beaches without a resort will have all manner of plastic bottles, nappies, cathode ray tubes – you name it – washed up on the shore. The locals claim that the debris is borne on the ocean currents from the Maldives, but this cop-out excuse doesn’t explain the heavily littered interior of the island. We couldn’t tell if the real reason for the junk is poor policy, overconsumption from tourism, cultural or infrastructure challenges – or what. Whatever the cause, if it doesn’t change at some point surely tourists will stop coming, and without the tourist dollars motivating the cleanup one wonders what will become of this spectacular place.
Despite the rubbish, this was probably the best snorkelling of our trip. The water was warm and clear – about 30 degrees with 15m visibility by my reckoning – and some of the best on Koh Lipe itself was off Sunset Beach where we were staying. The beach is packed with longtail boats but swimming between them we saw clownfish, stonefish, moray eels, neon-coloured Christmas tree worms and lots of moorish idols and other aquarium fish. Much of the coral has bleached but the same is true of almost everywhere, and for sheer ease of access and variety of fish, Koh Lipe takes the prize.
The real highlight wasn’t finding Nemo or even the Thaijitos on the beach: it was meeting other like-minded families and Finn really starting to make friends on this trip. If we weren’t off exploring, we were on the beach out front of Castaway, Finn splashing with his mask and snorkel in the water or building sandcastles with his mates. We made good friends on the island who we hope to catch up with again later on in our travels.
Getting there
Between Yogyakarta in Indonesia and Koh Lipe we stayed in five places in five nights across three countries:
- Yogyakarta
- Train to Jakarta and stay overnight
- Flight to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
- Flight to Hat Yai (Thailand)
- … and finally a ferry out to Koh Lipe
Phew! By the time we got to Koh Lipe we were ready to put some roots down.
Jakarta
We were only in Jakarta for half a day and ten million people can’t be wrong, there has to be something compelling about this place – but we couldn’t find it. It’s a stinky armpit of a city and it couldn’t even bring itself to put on a proper sunset: at around 4pm the sun just sort of gives up and slowly dissolves into the smog above the horizon. It’s a measure of Indonesia’s brilliance that its memory dwells fondly on, untainted by our last impression of its murky beige capital city. We will be back, but only to pass through, God willing.
( Editor’s note: Steffi insists that I’m being unfair … but she also remembers that she had the same experience 15 years ago on her last visit to this grey city. )
Kuala Lumpur
Our AirBnB was in one of KL’s many towers, complete with a view of the city and a rooftop pool.
Our time in KL was evenly divided between rooftops and the tiny streets below. Highlights were dinner at the Wet Deck, a rooftop bar under the Petronas twin towers, and brunch the next morning at a little cafe called Feeka nearby.
Hat Yai
We had a quick overnighter in Hat Yai, just long enough to get the logistics done: get through Thai immigration, organise a local SIM card, buy sunscreen, etc. In the morning, we were off!
Castaway
Castaway is primarily a divers’ resort so it’s comfortable but not flashy. Our thatched hut had a bathroom below, a bedroom upstairs, and a token front porch rendered completely unusable by hordes of outsized mosquitoes. We developed a dance manoeuvre and door-opening ritual to keep the mozzies out, which resembled madly flapping like a half-inflated scarecrow followed by quickly jumping inside and slamming the door shut. Dignified? No. Effective? Not really. Hilarious? Definitely!
There was no aircon in the hut but the fans were powerful enough to flap your eyelids. This may sound uncomfortable, but fan-forced eyelid-flapping is remarkably soothing when it’s 28 degrees and humid at 2 o’clock in the morning.
It’s the tail-end of the wet season so we had thunderstorms booming and shaking the hut every night, but like clockwork the weather was clear by morning.
The Castaway restaurant and bar flow onto the beach and we spent many happy days with our toes in the sand. This was a lucky pick and definitely the best spot on the island.
Around Koh Lipe
It’s a small island, easily explored top to bottom in a day.
Madame Yoohoo is one of many restaurants lining the Walking Street, named for its elderly owner who yoohoos at passersby to lure them into the shop. The food is simple, cheap and delicious and we came here a few times for lunch and dinner. The ladies took a shine to Finn and got him to help out with the yoohooing:
Kayaking
It’s been a while since we were in a kayak and this felt like the perfect time. It was a hot day, there was a bit of a swell and the kayak was not the sleekest, so it was hard work. We circled the island and visited a couple of others, gliding over the corals below.
Island hopping and snorkelling
One of the best things about this trip has been seeing Finn getting the hang of snorkelling and getting more and more curious about the underwater world that has opened up to him.
Steffi and I packed our snorkels from Sydney, and we brought a lifejacket and swimming goggles for Finn. There are so many things that can go wrong for a 4-year-old snorkelling and we didn’t want to put Finn under pressure, so in Indonesia our technique was to strap him in the lifejacket and have him piggyback on me. If we saw anything interesting, I would tap him on the arm and he would briefly duck his head under to look. That worked pretty well.
Towards the end at Karimunjawa, we started tacking a snorkel onto his goggles so that he could actually breathe under water. By Koh Lipe he was confident with the snorkel so we upgraded the swimming goggles to a full mask. A couple of days later he seemed to have the hang of that and was already spotting clownfish and moray eels on his own off the beach, so we decided to take him island hopping and snorkelling on some real reefs. It was a long day and a gamble but it paid off, Finn loved it and we had one of the great days of the trip.
We hired a longtail boat to take us around the islands for the day. Our skipper Joey is a Chao Lay, the indigenous people of these islands, and he grew up on Lipe. His English was limited but he knew all of the spots, the tides and the currents, and we had a great time.
We stopped for lunch at a spot called Monkey Beach. I was idly wondering if we could expect any actual monkeys when one parachuted down from the tree above and landed perfectly, right next to Finn’s fried rice. The poor boy, I swear he nearly levitated. He completely lost it, yelling in panic, running around, his face beetroot red, tongue and eyeballs hanging out. I say the poor boy, I should say the poor ape: I’m not sure if monkey therapy is a thing but I hope so, he will need it after that. He was off before we could grab the camera, but we did get this video of him back up in the tree …
Friends
Finn (and us grownups) made fast friends in a short time at Castaway. It’s a kid-friendly place and we saw more families here than in the whole of Indonesia put together.
The Whiteleys in Asia 