At first coming to Koh Lipe was a bit of shock to the senses. Coming straight from laid-back Koh Bulone I felt like we’d made a mistake to come to this island that just seemed over-run and overdeveloped. It probably did not help that we started out with a walk across the island in the afternoon heat with our heavy bags on. We did not have a map and we walked way too far, past the island’s very large dump site where trash was burning sending toxic smelling smoke in our faces. The place we had planned on staying had closed down. Every other place where we asked for rooms was full. The entire island seemed full – or actually overbooked. I hated it already. In the end we decided that we’d camp again, we had seen on Tezza’s website that some people had camped at the sand spit at the very end of sunrise beach. I hailed a taxi (meaning a motorbike with a sidecart) and the sweet lady driving it agreed to take us. As soon as we were on the way with her we started to feel a bit better, we were no longer carrying the bags and the wind in our hair was nice – we were going somewhere! We did get bogged down in the sand at one point and Martin and I pushed her and the motorbike through it, I would have liked a video of that! We got to our intended camping spot and it was beautiful! Right by what is possibly the prettiest beach on the island and the sun was starting to set into what promised to be a gorgeous sunset. We did feel a little bit weird about setting up a tent there, were we on somebody’s (the resort to either the left or right) land? I had asked about accommodation at one of the resort’s reception and they were of course full, so it was not like they could sell us any rooms anyway. And there was one other tent already pitched. So we set up our tent and enjoyed the sunset that was the prettiest we’ve seen on our entire island hopping trip.
