koh lipe

The island life is chilled to the max - or perhaps to the 'min', as it were. We have been the first customers at Lek's Boomerang, a rustic and charming shack that is a bar on Sunrise Beach the opened on the 14th of Feb. It's interesting to watch the place literally being built around us by a team of enterprising, creative and friendly locals. We were treated like a part of the family by Lek, Chai and Tong and it felt good to be a part of, what I believe, are great beginnings. We all ate dinner together the one night around one big table by candlelight...

No bungalows as of yet (although it's purely my own speculation that there will ever be) so the four of us shared a cheerful blue and orange tent. This was fun for 5 nights, but Vin and I splurged a little for a bungalow on the sixth. Princess = me. So the tent was less than comfortable to say the least, but the atmosphere made it all worth it and, at 75B p/n each, it was the ultimate in budget traveller's accommodation.

Having arrived on Koh Lipe at the onset of Chinese New year accommodation was virtually impossible to find. Mental note: chart the local holidays before making travel plans! The "Maldives of Thailand" (as Lipe is known) are an awfully popular tourist destination and prices were rather inflated. Luxury resorts are snapping up beachfront property at a rapid rate (right next door to us at Lek's loomed the laney "Idyllic Resort") which has resulted in overused water supplies, stressed sewerage systems and a lot of litter. Lipe used to be a part of the same national park that Taraotau belongs to but, as a result of the above-mentioned money hungry industry, it had prostituted itself to tourism and lost its marine reserve status.

What appears to have once been a teeming and abundant coral life population has been damaged, broken up and partially destroyed by long-tail boats and ignorant "pharangs" (Thai for white tourist) with no regard for the fact that what they're trampling over are not plants, but in fact living creatures. This made me feel really frustrated and sad and I think volunteering for coral reef restoration just jumped a few places on my list of jobs to consider.

Speaking of jobs, absolute inactivity has been our main activity, immobility our mode of transportation. Excluding an epic swim to a nearby island that Vin and I undertook, a few walks and some sandcastle building, we really didn't do anything on Lipe. Inactivity on such a grand scale is really beginning to get to me. I'm craving intellectual and creative stimulation and I think moving north towards Chaing Mai and finding some form of employment is high on my list at the moment.