We finally arrived on the island of Lipe a few days ago in the Ko Tarutao National Marine Park, which is just north of the Malaysian border on the west coast. This is the picture of Thailand that I had in my mind before this trip. The beaches are like baby powder, unspoilt jungles rise right behind them, and the crystal clear waters are filled with fish and corals. It is definitely the one place in Thailand I would recommend to anyone - at least for the time being...

We entered Thailand by bus at Chong Mek from Pakse. Thailand is the only SE Asian country that doesn't charge anything for a tourist visa, which is nice in a place where very few things are free. We changed busses at Ubon Ratchathani, which was a bit confusing, since it seemed like everyone who was on our bus from Pakse ended up on a different bus at Ubon, even though everyone was headed to Bangkok. The overnight bus dropped us off at Bangkok's Northern bus terminal at 5am the next morning. This place is enormous and confusing. After finding the information booth and asking where the busses into the city leave from, we headed in the direction we were pointed - first having to dodge the busses swinging through the terminal. We then walked through some sort of large market area, which at 5am was doing quite the business, and wandered around a bit until we found some other station, were turned back around, walked through the market again, and eventually found the city busses. However, this worked out great, considering the #3 bus took us right into Banglamphu about a block away from Khao San road for about 50 cents each. I wonder what the people bargaining with the tuk-tuk drivers at the bus terminal ended up paying. It was pretty far away.

We ended up staying at the Merry V guesthouse, about three blocks off the famous (infamous?) Khao San Road. The whole area is really quite a trip, as most backpackers that go through SEA end up here at one point or another, and there are quite a few of them. Add to that the Bangkok feeling of 'really anything goes' - where you have guys on the street selling fake IDs right next to the police station - and it becomes interesting. Bangkok itself is really quite interesting - it would probably take a month to explore it properly, and we didn't have nearly enough time. We did spend the better part of one day walking around the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo, which is the holiest Buddhist site in the country, as it holds the country's most important image, the Emerald Buddha. For those of you interested, the history of the Emerald Buddha is very cool (i'll try and put a link here later for you). We also struck out to Siam Square to do some shopping at the Mah Boon Krong (MBK) Center, and caught a Muay Thai match at Rajdamnoen Stadium. All in all though, we mostly just ran errands in Bangkok, shipped stuff home, and tried to figure out the best plan moving forward, among the myriad of options (and travel agents, and touts, and con artists).

We settled on going to Ko Tao (Ko means Island) following our Rough Guide's advice that some of the best diving in Thailand could be found there. Ko Tao is one of the most remote islands of the east coast, which is another reason we chose it. We took the overnight train out of Bangkok to Chumphon, and were immediately greeted by the ferry agents on the platform of the Chumphon train station. If I had to do that again, I would probably have just bought a ticket from Bangkok straight through to Ko Tao - the government run train wasn't all that pleasent, and between the train and the ferry ticket, we ended up paying about B900 a person to get out there. Ferries are expensive, everywhere in Thailand, and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of choice, especially on the less popular routes. Anyways, on the ride over to Ko Tao, it started to rain. Then we got to Ko Tao, and it rained some more - not just a light rain, but it really poured. For three days straight. We were a little sick of Ko Tao by then. However, we couldn't quite leave, because we had both signed up to do the Advanced Open Water PADI course through Sunshine Divers. All diving on Ko Tao is relatively inexpensive, and most of the time accomodation through the dive shops is cheap (and basic). We got three nights free at the attached "resort" on the southern side of the island. The more popular east coast had the beach, the crowds and the noise. It probably had the better places to stay too. Ashley came down with a bit of an ear problem after the first day of diving, so we opted for a day off on our third day there. And it rained the whole day. The fourth and last day there, Ashley still didn't feel up for diving, so I completed the remaining three dives for the course, including one where we went down to 30m (100 feet). The dives themselves weren't all that great unforunately - the rain and resulting run-off from the land had killed the visibility, but we did see some bull sharks, great barricuda, and rays.

The day before Ashley's birthday, we travelled the entire day, taking a seven hour ferry ride from Ko Tao to the port of Suratthani, a bus from the port into the town, and another bus across Thailand to arrive into Krabi and K's Guesthouse at about 9pm. Krabi seemed like a pretty cool town - we had dinner that night in the giant nighttime food court by the river, but in the morning we were off again to Ko Lanta. We got a really nice place on the beach for Ashley's birthday - huge deck, traditional Thai design, and most importantly, A/C, hot water, and a TV. One of the best things about Ko Lanta was that it didn't rain while we were there. The seafood restaurants in the main town were excellent, the beaches were nice, and the snorkeling wasn't great. We did rent a moto for a day and got to explore most of the island, which is really quite large. The third night, we moved a beach farther down the island, about 2km, to the more backpacker oriented bungalows. While the rooms were nothing to write home about, it was a good relaxing day, followed by some great views of the sunset from our restaurant on the beach.

From Ko Lanta, it was an all day (and expensive) ferry ride to Ko Lipe, but it was certainly worth it. Tao and Lanta didn't fit the picture of Thailand in my mind - they were too big in size, too many people, too many overpriced hotels and restaurants, I think Lipe fits just about right. Don't get me wrong, this isn't The Beach (which, by the way, the island where The Beach was filmed, Ko Phi Phi Leh, now receives a huge amount of tourists daily thanks to that movie, and package tours) but its nice. We have a nice bungalow up on a hill - one side overlooks Pattaya beach, where all of the tourist restaurants and bars and bungalows are, and the otherside goes down to a beach that we have basically had all to ourselves. It takes only 10 minutes to walk from north to south of this island, and probably only 3 times as long to to east to west. Like I said before, the number of fish and corals here are awesome - as Ash put it, its like swimming in a giant fish tank. I read that 25% of the tropical fish species of the world live in the marine park around this island. We went on an all day snorkeling trip yesterday and saw a number of giant moray eels, boxfish, clownfish, barricuda, puffers - you name it, and its probably here. However, like everything else in Thailand currently is, this place is on the verge of being built up too much - give it 3 or 4 years more, it won't be the same. In an kind of ironic twist, the 2004 tsunami didn't touch Ko Lipe, and as a result, the TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) decided to 'put it on the map' according to a guy at the local dive shop, who's already looking for another island to go to.

We ended up spending a little longer on Lipe than planned. Then again, it was pretty hard to pull yourself away from a place like that. Harder still proved to be actually getting off the island and moving onto our next destination, Kuala Lumpur, where we are now, when the F1 Grand Prix was in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend. Couldn't even get a spot on the bus - all of this, by the way, upset Ashley greatly...

But, we did manage to book all of our stuff through Friends Tour, who are really great people - I think we were at their place reading books, or getting info, or using the internet almost every day - and took an '88 Corona from where the ferry dropped us off over to Hat Yai, and then hopped on the overnight bus out of Thailand. Lipe was a great vacation, but I doubt it will be the same for long, as evidenced by the amount of construction that is currently underway there. I did go out diving with Forra Diving, but wouldn't recommend their shop to anyone else - try one of the others instead. Diving in itself was not what I expected - extremely strong currents due to the full moon tide - and along with that, visibility wasn't the greatest. However, we did see just absolute beautiful soft corral forrests, a number of stone fish and scorpion fish, and some interesting crabs.

So, thinking back on Thailand, and re-reading what I've written above, it seems more like a list of things done, places seen, etc., instead of tales of adventure and local culture - and I guess that's what a normal vacation is like, and I guess that sums up Thailand more than anything. Just a normal vacation in an extraordinary place. I'll leave you with some more pics of Lipe, just in case you wanted to see more of what you are missing.