Koh Lipe. I can't tell if I wrote the title as The Last Paradise, or The Lost Paradise. Either would be appropriate. It is the last paradise on the edge of being lost, just barely a bastion of undiscovered and inaccessible yet hospitable island life. Just barely. I wrote the story with mixed emotion. With the excited energy of a storyteller sharing an experience, the increasingly rare travel experience; a destination untouched and unknown (almost). At the same time I have the fear and sadness of a storyteller who realizes the story can only contribute to the final extinction of this experience.
The coral reefs are still relatively pristine and uncluttered by throngs of floaty sea-shrimp shaped Chinese divers. The beaches are not shoulder-to-shoulder with orderly, crudely-bright colored beach chairs and sun umbrellas. Not covered with the blinking strobe lights at night with bars battling and powering-out beats continually cranking the volume to over-noise their neighbors beats… with the only customers who can possibly tell the difference between the sound cacophonies coming from the fancy bamboo huts/bars which vie for popularity, their identical layout somehow chosen, somehow picked by the tourists, usually on the persuasiveness of the touts yelling above the drone of bleating of… whatever the fuck that sound is, and their popularity continues based on “the first to have the crowd keeps the crowd” because despite the identicalness of the huts, the perception is the crowd shows the popularity. The owners of each hut can only assume the patrons must be choosing their competitors establishment based on the volume level of their shit-pop-edm muddled together sounds like a mix of chunky ear peanut butter and stale flat beer mixed on the slow setting of a dying blender… and I write this a kilometer down the beach, Pattaya Beach, from where the only two such huts on the island exist, and I can barely hear myself think, all I can really think is, damn, this place is already lost.
I walked by to find another beach to write at. I look in at the crowd of about a dozen in one hut, and two in the other. It is mostly drunk teenagers with a few middle aged corporate escapists reliving their glory days or perhaps just wanting an environment where they have the chance to yell all their impotent complaints of the daily rat race life they have finally escaped, yelling to their colleagues what a paradise this is, yelling about the perfect beach, yelling to be heard next to the low-quality large-sized sub-woofers standing at each corner of the bamboo fence between the bamboo huts of popularity. The other two tourists in the unpopular hut just appear to be lost and I would guess were of the spineless type that just couldn’t say no to the tout that brought them in with promises of best Mai-Tai cocktails in Thailand. I didn’t make it to the another beach, it seemed that I enjoy watching the trainwreck of humanity too much. As I’m writing this I am listening to purplicious from the hut down the beach, at 1pm with a cold Leo beer that I purchased from 7-11, sitting on the traditional thai cushion triangle pillow that was left on the deck of a massage parlor that appears closed at the moment.
The beach is of course changing, as I saw on my first night of arrival on Pattaya beach with the single strobe light for hundreds of square kilometers piercing the night and a series of bars fighting for popularity, which ultimately means money. Fortunately, this is only one small section of the island, and seems to be a cancer that could be extracted with some effort. It is the fulfilment of need some of us have for conformity, popularity, selfish greedy desires for wealth and a perverse need to advance or be successful or whatever… Maybe it is something else.
After going to Pattaya beach on the first night, and a bit of concern and disappointment at the reggae bar joint we went to sunrise beach and decided to stay up until, well, sunrise. We put on our bathing suits and decided to be in the ocean for the sunrise at 6am, so we try wading out at 5am, however it is low tide and knee deep for hundreds of yards… so, we carefully walk between coral lumps and spears of sea urchins… of which I still have six spine tips embedded in my fingers from my single attempt at swimming. And, there it is, am I just another damaging tourist trying to maintain a paradise and still simply ruining the environment simply by existing there? Am I the problem because, regardless of intention, I am where I shouldn’t be? How do I make it better instead of worse? Is it really any issue, being six sea urchin spines? Where can 8 billion people exist on 150 million square kilometers? That is about 50 square kilometers each. And most of that isn’t any place most of us travel, the high himalayas, antarctica, the amazon, etc. Then there is the progress and advancement of the human race that has paved a significant portion of the natural landscape we do value and travel regularly, so, we have maybe 25 square kilometers of natural area each, for our entire lives, and I bet that’s overly optimistic, and I bet we travel much more of that on average. How do I make it better instead of worse? And, is the problem really a few sea urchin spines or the attitude that you can say “it is only a few urchin spines” and carry on with life as if it doesn’t matter… and then, maybe, as the sun rises, you think, it doesn’t matter. And, maybe I don’t know.
The sunrise was a sunrise. It happened but I was paying more attention to jay then to the sky. I do remember looking up at the stars, in the silence, the sound of waves, no continuous beats, no motorcycle noises at 5 am, no left over drunk people wandering loud, lost, and belligerent… and as a man who appreciates the complete disregard for self betterment, I can say there is a time and place for such things, but there also must be a place to escape from such humanity, such bad examples of our best selves. I am reminded of HST Fear Loathing LV and the cult following of such an act… yes, to push the boundaries of consciousness, of limits of restraint to do that in vegas is fitting, but to bring it to the place of refuge, this the cause of fences, of property rights, and powerful weapons to keep the mad berserkers at bay.
“Can we pretend the airplanes in the night sky are like shootin' stars?” Oh, Bob, here, on Koh Lipe, there really are more shooting stars than airplanes, and I hope it remains that way, or else, it just becomes like every place else.
What we are really searching for is originality, and we look for it by following those who say they found it. And with that in mind, I ask you, look for your own lost paradise, because by the time you read this, find the time and money to book the trip, and then find the courage to leave that existence of slavery at your desk, if only for a week or two, when you do this, don’t come to Koh Lipe, it will already be gone as I’ve described it. Even how I’ve described it in the best tone. Go search out a place people aren’t going for the escape from people. If you are looking for the blasting music bamboo popular bars then go to those places, but for the love of god, do not bring your money for debauchery to the holy places.
Reverence is not a thing I would recommend on most occasions. Surely not for people or technologies.
Reverence for the last vestiges of escape, the last places of solitude, of fresh discoveries of new ideas, new cultures… but not the hip-hop-pop-edm; leave that in the city. That’s what it’s there for.
I had to leave Adang Sea as they started playing “Bring Sexy Back” and now I am back at Wapi listening to the long tails blare their combustion above the voices of the song birds in the trees. So, I go for a walk. I contemplate my sour mood and wonder if it is justifiable… At the beach I take photos of people taking photos… I pretend I am somehow more entitled judging them as the kind of people who will throw their empty water bottles on the ground, or their cigarette butts into the ocean. I watch a woman pose on a paddleboard...not going anywhere, just balanced there half on the beach and half in the surf, but she is giggling and laughing and falling in the water. Who am I to judge her
I walk past her and she is covered in makeup, like a clown, stage makeup and she has needy eyes, eyes that when they meet mine they beg for attention, and I can see, clearly see she only sees herself in my eyes, she doesn’t even see me. She only … yeah who am I do judge.
I went for a run at 8:30 am next morning and paddleboard girl was out getting pictures. Not on the paddleboard any longer but on a beach chair in an overly elegant bright yellow dress with a revealing open middle section. In all it was attractive, but the contradiction from the attractive model to the trash covered beach just down the way a hundred yards was a bit hypocritical for me to feel at ease with enjoying her beauty. The only section of beach strewn with litter, (other sections had bits and pieces) the only section clearly not taken care of was the boat people area which the islands only school was set behind. At first I thought, well, they just don’t clean the high tide area as the resorts clearly must, it isn’t necessarily the boat people’s trash, and that may be true for some of the litter I witnessed, but there were too many old grease and oil cans for them to be innocent, and by percentage of trash being boat related I would say almost entirely guilty.
I wonder how it would feel to have your land taken over by resorts and tourists, and you first (you the natives, the boat people; Chao Lay) first bought out then sold out then pushed out. I would hate the beauty of it too.
The booking of the hotels was a bit complicated as it was a Thai holiday, as it so often is in Thailand, so after the first night I had to move from Wapi to the center of town, the Nest Hostel, which was lovely looking, and smelling, and appeared like a bed an breakfast homestay style place. No one else was at the hostel, perhaps due to the fact it was the same price as the Beachside hotel which I came from but it had been booked up due to our short reservation timing. After checking in... upon closer inspection it was revealed that mold had begun to creep around the room and had lightly invaded the bedsheet, pillow, and darker corners of the room. It was tolerable by sleeping head/feet reversed direction because the mildew had been strongest under the pillows and where the top sheet had been crisply folded back. Also, the room smell was not as good as I had originally thought.
The next day we moved back to the Wapi, albeit to a room a bit further back. In fact it was the furthest from the beach, bordering the dirt road and instead of the sound of waves it was the occasional motorcycle with consistent laughing and yellings of the locals as they passed by. So much happiness all around, and I can’t help but smile at the innocence and joy even as I talk about the weather with the locals and they all say it has changed dramatically these last few years. The monsoon is inconsistent, the storms are stronger, the tides and currents more unpredictable. The water is colder this year than the last few, which is good because the warmer water years had been killing the coral.
The morning after Nest I sat with the owner Nok, who had bought the hotel just before Covid and waas having a bit of a difficult time keeping it kept up without the usual expected number of tourists. She talked about her hometown of Chiang Mai and Switzerland, she is a dual citizen but with Covid she will stay in Thailand for the foreseeable future…
I’d forgotten the entire point of this writing was to share how beautiful the diving around Adang is, and it is beautiful. A couple days after arrival I do my 1st Adang dive and my 101st overall dive and as tradition I mike it a naked dive. I swim out with jay and them we pull our undies off and down we go. With jay naked beside me I didn’t completely focus on the coral, and abundant sea life, but, as for my nakedness I did keep an out eye o any larger fish in the near vicinity, particularly looking for any trigger fish. The dive ended without incident and I made plans to go out on the boat the next day for a proper introduction to the Adang Sea.
The first proper dive in Adang sea was at Koh (Koh is Thai for island and pronounced more like GOh) then Koh Yan (east side) The next day I went out for 3 more dives at Talang, Honeycomb, and then Stonehenge. These were, absolutely, without doubt, the most incredible dive sites I’ve ever experienced (A picture is worth a thousand words, and yet neither pictures nor words can express the feeling of being part of such a place.)
Between the days of diving we moved to the center of the island again just next to walking street, the painted blue walkway that bans motorcycles from 6pm to midnight. The room is on the third floor, the top floor, and looks out from the balcony on a small shanty of chao-lay (sea people) with tin and thatched roofing and an antiquated satellite dish sticking up through the top side. The place is quiet at night… at least until around 2 or 3 am when the other guests come stumbling in from the bars or from Pattaya Beach. The walls are perhaps the thinnest I have encountered in my travels, and that is saying quite a bit. Conversations even at whispered volumes is distinguishable and luckily for me I don’t speak Thai so the sounds become background noise without the sleep depriving aspects of ideas. Regardless at 3 am the drunk bastards are stumbling and falling and dropping whatever bricks and stones and chunks of steel they seem to have accumulated throughout the night. If you, yourself, are drunk or tired enough then the noises are just echos in your own dreams.
Maybe this is a story about travel adventures and travel obstacles, and how you can't really tell the difference between the two. The mission was to extend my Thai visa which was nearing expiration. The immigration in Satun, the nearest office to Koh Lipe told me I must be there for an extension by Monday morning. That doesn't appear to be a difficulty as it is Friday. However, the boat booked for 2pm leaves at 1:30 just as we arrive at the pier. Luckily, there is one more ferry at 4pm.
The last day. Get up late. Heavily rested. Too rested. Do errands and tag along with jay as she says goodbyes and I say goodbyes as well, but different levels of sweet sorrow as I’ve only been on the island ten days. Not what you’d call a local or resident expat, or even extended tourist.. The motorcycle taxi price is per person which is a bit bullshit since it’s the same two minute ride, and the idea should be to split the fare as more people join the ride, but since the total cost is only $3 it doesn’t seem worth bitching about it. I do though. Maybe it is so much sleep. Need to redirect that energy toward the boat company, which chose to leave ½ before schedule without notice, so when we arrived we able to relax and sit down, no hurry, island life… I shouldn’t bring city life attitude to the island. Still, my frustration at such inept scheduling, and the associated costs to me (The associated costs being that for some inexplicable reason the minibuses at my destination, Satun, stop running before the last ferry arrives). For those not in the know, a minibus is a pickup truck, usually a mini by western standards that have crudely built bench seats in the back, they are usually private run and go wherever the crowds are. The only reason I can guess they stop running before the last ferry, indeed it is only the last ferry they are not around for, is they made an arrangement with the taxi companies. They get most the daily passengers but for the last ferry all the tourists will be without option and have to take the taxi, which for perspective run $30 as compared to $3 for the minibuses. Still, the waves are soothing and I have half a joint left in my bag, so, I’m going to relax at the beach for the next two hours until the boat arrives.
In Satun. The minibuses, and buses, and everyone except the taxi vans and personal vehicles have indeed stopped running. Adang Sea managers sister was on the boat with us and was kind enough to drive us to Satun proper, which was extraordinary nice of her considering it was almost and hour detour out of her way.
We checked in to the Satun Thanee hotel across from immigration, and although it looked clean and was clean it smelled so strongly of moth balls that we opened the door, the window, turned the A/C and bathroom fan on and evacuated to the empty ‘restaurant area’ next to reception about 10 minutes. When we returned it still stunk but we figured just for the one night, no big deal. However, immigration informed me that the paperwork for my visa extension must be filed on the 30th, today, even though the sergent who would sign off on it might not be back for a few days. Up to two weeks. I was upset for a minute, especially when I noticed they used another visa page to stamp “Visa Under Approval” Taking up the whole page, and thereby leaving me with only two visa pages left. And, you know what they’ll do if I don’t have visa pages? Refuse to give me my next extension. Volgons. Ah, but, there are some aspects to all situations I do have some control over. So, off to explore.
Off to Baan Suan. Then to Hat Yai where we wait for the landslides from the off season monsoon to be cleared. The whole city of Hat Yai is closed, a ghost city, Jeang restaurant near the school is open, taxi drivers very aggressive for our business, without exaggeration, we are the only two tourists in the city.
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