The most beautiful island I’ve ever seen – Koh Lipe

Tuesday 19th January

Today we are heading to Koh Lipe. We’ve only met one person so far that is heading there, and no one who has been. Martin was in the dorm here with us before he went Koh Lipe.

Our pick up was at 10.30am, well due then and arrived at about 10.45am (not bad!) already on board were a couple of Brits, two French, and two Germans. We threw our bags on the roof and waved goodbye to the lovely folks who had looked after us the past few days. We had to make one more stop before heading to the pier, we collected two older Swedish couples from a super fancy resort. They weren’t very impressed trying to get their suitcases on the roof, and instead waited for the hotel concierge to do it. They then had to squeeze into seats which fit around 2 people and a single butt cheek. The rear boot was left open for them to have a little more leg room which they found just all to exciting, and started a photo shoot. Once at the pier we grabbed an iced coffee and a pain au chocolat for the journey.

We then had to go through various ticket booths changing, exchanging, claiming and collecting various tickets and vouchers for our journeys and baggage, and finally we were allowed to sit still for two minutes to eat. We were then bundled on to the speed boat, and true to its booking confirmation, it was a speed boat. Ben and I claimed two of the hard formed plastic seats, I used my life jacket as a bit of padding to try and make it a little more comfortable. Our luggage followed. We were set. The boat was full, but each person had a seat which was rather nice (and novel for SEAsia). I forgot to mention how exceptional our pastries and coffees were! Recommended for anyone down at the pier!

As our new journey began, our headphones plugged in and we kicked back. We hadn’t been travelling that long (perhaps an hour) when we were stopping. In what appeared to be the middle of the ocean! Up next to us pulled a long tail boat. It did cross my mind that he could have been a pirate or bandit, but most likely was collecting a passenger and taking them to a neighbouring island. Exactly that.

We then continued about 40 minutes further before stopping again. This time we were at a beach and slowed down on the approach. The water was crystal. It was beautiful. I wanted to get in. The boat turned around and reversed towards the beach, a couple of long tail boats were kissing the shore. After the passengers dismounted we were off again. Next stop…..Koh Lipe. We arrived just after 3pm. Not that its needed, but #nofilter has never felt so satisfying! It was too beautiful for words.

The water here at Pattaya Beach was very shallow (low tide) so the boat was having to navigate the reef and marine life below. Quite a challenge with such a large boat! It was so gorgeous, Ben and I were both delighted that we had made the journey to come down here. Once at the beach we all disembarked and waiting on the white flour like dust that was trying to be sand for the boat guys to unload our bags and walk it to shore. People are just as impatient in this situation in this most beautiful place on earth as they are in grey London gatwick knowing they have to go back to work tomorrow. It was the mad baggage belt at an airport scenario. The Swede’s topped this list. They were desperate to load their long tail up and leave. I guess they were staying in one of the big resorts on the other side of the island.

Once we had our bags we headed to our hostel. A+ was new, only open for three months and whilst we didn’t have a reservation I’d seen a promotion of their Facebook page which suggested they had space, so we headed there. The island wasn’t cheap, but was no more than the rest of the west coast island. Don’t be fooled into thinking Thailand is cheap anymore folks. Especially not in the desirable months. The hostel was really nice. A capsule concept with both single and double capsules, communal bathroom and a little common room downstairs with TV and plenty of DVD’s.

We quickly dumped our stuff and bolted back to the beautiful powder beach that we had arrived on. We laid out our virtually new beach mats and soaked up the last of the afternoon sun. Ben didn’t waste any time in jumping into the sea. And once he tag teamed me, I was allowed in too. It was so warm, like bath water. And apparently very clear, I didn’t try it though. I wasn’t feeling so much of a pro today. I’ve never seen water so incredible. Fishes swam around my feet and crabs burrowed into the sand. Everything was just wonderful right about now!

We stayed on the beach whilst the sun set and then strolled back through the town stopping for a sweet treat before we managed to squeeze in a little snooze back at the hostel.

This evening we decided to walk the whole of walking street. It had really come alive! We headed right when we reached the cross roads (beach is left) and ended up walking all the way to the other side of the islands beaches. The street was lined with restaurants, bars and trinket and tour shops, all competing for the tourists wallets! One restaurant in particular caught my eye….the were selling huge fish kebabs but that was to be put on the back burner til tomorrow as Ben had his eye on another place which he had read about called Pooh’s. As in, Winnie The. Pooh’s was one of the oldest, most original places on the island which still used and excelled in delivering the original vintage recipes. Their board outside advertised live music on tonight too which sealed the deal. They were particularly famous for a type of curry that they did, so I of course had that, and Ben ordered another staple – Green curry, and as ever we shared spring rolls. Mine was absolutely delicious, so much flavour in that one bowl of orange delight! Like, galangal, chilli, garlic….all the standard items you’d find in a Thai curry, just blended slightly differently and doused in coconut milk. It was the best curry I’d had in a while! 

During dinner Ben asked what time the band were playing, only to be told that they were playing to,or row. Darn it. That would have made us come tomorrow instead and have the fish skewers tonight! Never mind. There were a few spots of rain during dinner, and luckily that’s all that they were as we were outside and uncovered!

After dinner we took a walk down the other end of walking street where by now the street was really busy and plenty more shops had opened up selling crafts, clothes and other local fashions. There was a man playing piano in one restaurant so we stopped outside to listen for a few minutes before continuing down to the beach itself. Along the beach various restaurants had expanded out onto the sand tossing cushions and low tables out for whoever wished to fall there. The obligatory fire show man was out twiddling his hot sticks, though not particularly well. There wasn’t much of an atmosphere down at the beach, despite being 10.30pm so we headed back up into the town where a bar had opened around sunset o clock on the crossroads by our hostel. It was called Maya. It was a very bohemian place, with floor cushions, bean bags, hammocks, no shoes and lights that were encapsulated in twig cages. The light was gorgeous….the kind that would be nice to have at home in the garden!

The bar tender was a little bit doolally but harmless nonetheless, he sand a song that had the lyrics ‘It’s the chicken that we fry fry fry, it’s the chicken that we are frying deep’. Perhaps he was just a little excitable! We opted to sit at the bar on stool which were tall tree trunks topped with bath mats! A unique use for them! The bar tender told us how he was in Koh Lipe working for the season and couldn’t wait to get home to his wife in Bangkok, bless him! We stayed for a couple of drinks and called it a night.

Wednesday 20th January

Eurgh! Snore off!! We have a room mate like no other, comes in drunk obviously lies on his back and snores. Snores like no other. Leaves his curtain open and is half hanging out of his pod anyway and snores. And bizarrely comes home with pockets full of coral – highly illegal! Once snore-a-Saurus Rex got up & went out, we managed to catch a little sleep.

Around 11.30am we headed out to a beach on the opposite side of the island to where we had landed, everything is walkable and didn’t take us long. The water was pretty choppy round here, and the water seemed a little dirtier, though I think anything would have looked dirty compared to yesterday’s! This side of the island there were two smaller islands nearby which you could kayak over to, that’s what we came for. Though on arrival at the beach we took a walk to try and find some kayaks…..to no avail. Bummer. I am now totally going to photo spam because, well, I just couldnt get enough of this place. I want to stay here forever.

The two islands were full of lush green forests, the beach we were walking on was more of the powder white dust, and the sea in between a glorious turquoise – the perfect blend of greens and blues. It was a scorching hot day without a cloud in the sky so we decided to play safe and pitched up under the protection of a little palm tree in front of a resort that was made up of beach front bungalows and villas. It looked fabulous, and what a view. Well, bar the two scraggly backpackers that had just pitched up centre of the frame! A few long tail boats were bobbing around in the water as well as a white boat which I assumed someone at the resort owned and arrived on!

Martin from our hostel happened to walk by and stopped for a chat. He was off on a boat trip this afternoon….we asked him to report back to see whether or not it’s something we should do tomorrow.

Once it reached around 3pm we headed back to the town to grab some late lunch. We walked a slight back way and ended up on a different part of the main street. The walk took us through the local houses where kids were playing, gardeners were chopping down what appeared to be everything, men were sleeping, laundry was hanging and life was continuing as normal. It was hot. Too hot for real life chores!

We stopped at a little shack near to the other beach. Neither of us were very impressed with our food unfortunately. Whilst the beach we spent the morning on was beautiful, we both preferred the sea of Pattaya beach so spent the rest of the afternoon there. This time pitched up under a tree where the public shower was. It provided a nice little cold splash of water to cool off in the burning heat! One more unwelcome user was a rather large Italian man. He had a big round belly, and tiny pants which he had rolled even smaller to fashion into a thong.

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When I looked up there was a old hairy white Italian bum above me. And when I thought it couldnt get worse, he then proceeded to pull the front of his pants lose and spray the shower down there! Some things are just not meant for public places. That was most definitely one of them!

Locals unloaded supplies onto the beach from long tail boats arriving at the end of the afternoon which were quickly carted off to various locations of the island. The sun set a gorgeous orange colour straight into the sea, perfect.

On our walk back to the hostel, restaurants were getting for the evenings service. One place had a cat helping out. Well, not exactly helping. Just chilling out. On the scales! Was kind of ironic as he was sat on the scales of a fish counter but couldn’t have looked more disinterested in the fish if he tried!

We didn’t got for dinner til bout 9pm. We went to the place where the pianist was playing last night….no fish skewers for me! A guitarist joined him. Neither of whom were particularly good! I ordered a Greek salad with chicken and a side of fries and Ben went for a pizza. Both were delicious. Thank god! The bar was busy, they had games for you to play, and was decorated with all sorts of eclectic items.

It was a nice place to be….just a shame about the shoddy music. Once we had eaten and listened to more than we wanted to we decided to go home. There was a TV and DVD player, and Ben had seen that they had Pan which we both wanted to see. Just as we got back two girls had put a movie on. It was Pan! Winner. For anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, it’s great. Well, the bit that we saw was. The owner came in and told us that he wanted to go to bed so we had to turn it off! So we are still yet to see the final 40 minutes. I’m hoping that it will be on one of our flights!

We made it to Cambodia

Thursday 29th October
A minivan picked us up at 8am. Already on board were two Italians, both named Flávio & two Norwegian chaps but I didn’t catch their names. Our journey took around 4hrs and we arrived at the ‘information centre’, after expecting to be dumped outside some big scary metal gates with a ‘This way to Cambodia’ label on them I had no idea what we were doing here but never the less followed suit and exited the bus to be very promptly handed a form which turned out to be our visa application. At the same time she also stuck a yellow sticker on us – no idea why!
Having thought we were going solo, I wasn’t expecting this assistance but welcomed it – but aired caution waiting to be slapped with a fat bill! Everything in Thailand is super cheap, but nothing is free. You might take the boat for 50 baht, but you have to pay 20 baht to get on the pier and then 200 baht to get onto an island, it’s all so little in GBP that it’s insignificant, but just funny. 

Anyway, we filled in the forms gave the woman our passport photos, passports and dollars – I’d googled, so knew these were all the things we needed to do to get our visa but still felt nervous giving her our passports – especially when she said i will be back in 45 minutes and disappeared! 

So, we sat and waited, and she came back with our passports – complete with Visa! Wahoo. We were bundled back onto the minibus for all of our two minutes and then asked to get out in a car park, so we did. We were then passed like human batons onto a Cambodian guy who was going to walk us over the border (at this point I’m still waiting to be asked for a service fee). 

We go through the first border to stamp out of Thailand, and then we are in no mans land. We keep following this chap, the two Norwegians have been to Cambodia before and were still with us so I figured it must be ok. They then leave and go to their hotel. At this point we reach the immigration office to get into Cambodia and the guy asks if we want to queue for our stamp into the country or whether we want to pay 200 baht for the VIP stamp. 

At this point my scam radar goes off so I nudge Ben and we opt for the queue, to which the guy tells us we will be queueing for 3 hours – we ignore him and join the queue. The Italians however go VIP. The guy gets them in and then comes back to find us in the queue to point out the obvious…. the Italians are now going to have to wait hours for us. I politely replied that ‘they were welcome to pay for us too if they wanted to’, I don’t think he sensed my sarcasm and instead walked away.

Ok, so the queue was moving which was a bonus. I guessed around 1.5hrs which turned out to be right in the end, so not so bad given some of the stuff I’d read on the Internet about 13hr long queues and people collapsing of dehydration!  

 Whilst we were in the queue a little boy probably no older than 4yrs came over to the bin and started fishing out the empty plastic drinks bottles, I’d seen uniformed men doing this in Thailand so I guess it’s for recycling / to get money, but it really struck me that this solo little boy was by this main road rummaging in a dirty bin that contained who knows what. It wasn’t long before he was joined by a little girl. She too was no older than 4, wearing an old ragged pink dress which had a bleach stain down the back. She had completed her outfit with a pair of jelly heels which were about 4 sizes too small for her so her heels hung off the back. She was super cute. Unwashed, but cute. They found some crisps and some ritz crackers in the bin so shared those between them whilst they filled their carrier bags with bottles and were soon on their way with their feast. Wished I’d had some sweets on me for them! 

So, we made our way through had our passports stamped about twenty times by the Cambodian border guys (all I kept thinking was ‘please don’t forget one’), and then made our way to Cambodia. 

Once we got to the pick up area we were collared by a chap who had noticed our stickers. Whilst in the queue I’d noticed how those on yours had these fancy lanyards – we clearly had the DIY version. The guy told us that his friend was our guide and had asked him to look out for us. He called he guide and said ‘I will take you to the bus station’. I knew we were getting another bigger bus to Siem Reap so we bundled onto the free shuttle bus. 

Once we got to the bus station it became apparent that the VIP Italians and our guide hadn’t waited for us after all! That said there were other buses we could get. We had missed the 3pm bus. The 4pm bus left at 3.20pm (obviously) and the next wasn’t til 5pm and was a coach that would take 4.5hrs. So we bit the bullet and paid 200 baht to get a minivan – bloody annoying as we could have just paid the 200 baht for the ‘VIP Stamp’ and saved ourselves 1.5hrs, hey ho. That said, it was a fun bunch of people on the bus. Took us just over 2hrs to get to Siem Reap, by then the sun had set. 

We reached the outside of the city and were asked to leave the minivan, and we would be onward taken to our individual hotels via tuk tuk (included within our bus fare). It didn’t take too long and we were soon at our hostel – HI Siem Reap. There was a communal area with pool table, food being served and a bar – this is something we have missed from our hostels recently, the social side. Somehow we got lucky and ended up with a 6 bed dorm to ourselves, the beds are memory foam, it’s super clean and the place smells like citrus all the time. Winner. 

We headed out to explore the town and grab some food. There’s a night market which is your standard kind of market but the workers have all picked up some cracking typically British phrases and other little phrases too. Everyone says ‘Lovely Jubbly’, and my personal favourite is ‘You want to buy something, you’re my best customer of the day, I will give you very good price’. This always comes as one string of words! 

We took a walk towards pub street to check that out and see what it was all about, a neon brightly lit ‘bang bang’ street aimed at westerners wanting to get drunk….standard! Everyone was handing out flyers on how great their Halloween celebration was going to be. Pub street was so small that we reached the end of it in about 30 seconds, which Ben hadn’t realised and kept walking.

  We ate at a Khmer family restaurant where we both ordered curry. I ordered the Khmer Amok which is one of their only real native dishes, everything else seems to take influence (well, just whole dishes) from Vietnam, China and Thailand. The Amok is a coconut based curry which has been steam cooked in a banana leaf leaving a really thick delicious goo. That’s the technical term for it. Ben’s curry was a red curry of some description which was like a stew, really good as well. Cambodia, I thinks out and my tastebuds are going to be good friends! By the time we had eaten everywhere was pretty quiet so we decided to head back to our hostel to see if there was much going on there – equally quiet. 

Friday 30th October

Somehow we managed to sleep in til around 11.30am today, clearly needed it. Our plan today was to head to Angkor Wat and then if there was time, we would see what else we could fit in as well.

We opted to get a Tuk Tuk driver for the day, the chap who had been sat outside of our hostel was our first port of call – we figured we would give his dragon den’s moment to sell to us why we should ride with him – but unfortunately, he hadn’t done his market research which ended in a lack of sales! There was no budging him and he just kept saying ‘is very far’, I wanted to reply with ‘if it wasn’t far, we wouldn’t need a Tuk Tuk’ but my sarcasm would have been wasted. Anyway, once he had realised that we had a map so knew how far it was he lost interest and sat down, and ignored us. 

The other side of the night market at the bottom of pub street was a slurry of Tuk tuk’s so we knew we would get one cheap enough, and soon enough for $10 we had a man who was going to ferry us around all day and stay til after sunset as well (they usually want extra for sunrise or sunset). After his offering up of chicken, we were soon on our way to the ticket office where we had to have our photos taken for our ticket as it was a transferable ticket between all of the temples.  

 Angkor Wat is something else. After all the immaculate temples in Japan, China and Thailand, it was great to see some derelict, fallen down ‘real deal’ old school temples and shrines. They were all really gothic and kind of eerie. Huge pillars created long alley like corridors, and every wall was intricately carved with details of what appeared to be battles, combat, sacrificial ceremonies, God’s & heroes.  

   
  There were so many nooks and crannies it would be impossible to see everything no matter how many times you visited. There were the usual flurry of Chinese tourists being guided round by a tour leader, taking photos of everything and anything and of course stopping for their photo shoots wherever they could, but there were also so many monks.  

 Young monks all armed with their iPads and iPhones taking group selfies which slightly skewed my (narrow) mind as to what I had assumed their monk-duties would entail. The monks got almost as much attention as the monkeys. We worked our way through and slightly around the site right the way through to the rear which is an awesome view as well – less postcardy. 

We had decided to come back to Angkor Wat for sunset as well so headed to Bayon next to see the faces. The Tuk Tuk journey here was pretty cool, we saw hundreds of monkeys & elephants too which I was super excited about! 

  Bayon was another of the eerie derelict looking temples, and again, you were free to roam it however you wished, no strict paths and designated photo spots which is great, but did make me wonder how much damage we as tourists are doing to these places. I had read about how other governments are funding these projects of these places and working with the locals in order to create these tourist attractions. They have big information boards showing the before and after and exactly which boulders have been moved and placed. 

   

 The faces of Bayon literally just made me smile. There is this big dark, dirty stone shrine with these grinning happy Buddhas poking their faces out wherever possible. It made me feel happy. We of course posed for the nose touching with the Buddhas. 

It was now peak heat of the day and Ben was struggling a little so we made a pit stop for him to refuel. He bought the juiciest mango, it was delicious! Once he had some water on board we headed to Ta Phrom – the tomb raider temple. Apparently Angelina Jolie and brad Pitt have been in the area within the month location hunting for a new movie that they are directing / producing later on this year. They have been chatting with the locals and doing test shots! Made me chuckle as Ben made a real point of going and touching a pole earlier in the day and when I asked ‘what on earth are you doing?’ He replied with ‘Angelina Jolie could have touched it’ – and actually, quite rightly she could have. 

   

 Ta Phrom was really cool. Again, a dark and scary tomb but here, Mother Nature was boss. The temple was falling down where the trees had started growing literally through, over, around and IN the building. The trees were like nothing I have ever seen before, as if their roots were huge medusa snakes had literally forced walls to topple, and they were growing over walls and the jungle was eating the temple. This temple will 100% be completely swallowed by the jungle in time. Incredible. 

It was around 5pm now so we were a little early for sunset but decided to head over to Angkor Wat in preparation. We pitched up on the perimeter walls where we watched two Cambodian boys playing in the moat. They were jumping off the steps into the water and showing off, picking up sticks and sword fighting each other – it was nice to watch children play and be children rather than all the kids you see here working. 

For sunset we pitched up in the front of the lake. This is where the double temple can be seen – it reflects perfectly. The sun rises behind Angkor Wat and therefore sets in front of it so in order to get a good view you needed to be right at the other side of the temple but it would have been a nightmare to navigate back in the dark so we opted for the front. It was quite cloudy so the sky wasn’t able to reflect very well, it was still pretty though. Sure enough once we were done with our sunset our Tuk Tuk driver was still ready and waiting for us, and took us back to our hotel. It was pretty busy and everyone else was headed back into town as well so the ride was fun racing all the other modes of transport – buses, minivans, cars, Tuk tuk’s, scooters, push bikes. It gets dark so quickly once the sun has gone down so was nice to see the temple area in a very different light. 

When we got back, Ben had arranged for our Tuk Tuk driver who delivered us to our hotel to come and meet him simply because he couldn’t get rid of him. Ten minutes later Ben reappeared telling me that we were being picked up a at 9am to go to the floating villages! 

  Tonight we went for dinner in an area recommended by our receptionist, it’s local food and really cheap! We are celebrating Halloween tomorrow night and given our now early start we opted for a quiet night