Koh Lipe: Paradise at a Cost

The trip to Koh Lipe will always be that time I vacationed with friends. I can recommend a hotel, point out the best beaches, and give you tips on how to get there. But I am unable to tell you who calls this tiny island home or how it came to be part of Thailand. I spent a week in Koh Lipe blissfully ignorant of the cost that made my vacation possible.

I didn’t do any research before my trip. I didn’t know that the island was home to the Chao Ley people. I had never heard of the Chao Ley. I didn’t know that they were “people of the sea” made up of three tribes that have been roaming the Andaman Sea for the last millennium. Or, that they have been inhabiting Koh Lipe long before Thailand was even a nation. 

I didn’t know that land continues to be grabbed from them; that resorts encroach their beachfront villages, forcing them inland into tiny settlements. I didn’t know that the Chao Ley were stateless until recently, and that still, some don’t have Thai citizenship.

Without citizenship, they don’t have the right to own property, a concept hard to grasp for a people who have always shared the land. Taking advantage, developers and wealthy individuals claim the land of Chao Ley ancestors as their own.

I had an amazing time with my friends in Koh Lipe, but looking back on this trip, I wish I had made an effort to learn about the island. If I had been aware of Koh Lipe’s history, I would have been more conscious of where I spent my money and who I was supporting. I would have wandered around with more awareness of what this island was like before tourism swept in. I would have recognized the privilege I have to vacation here at the cost of a community of people.

And I would have appreciated the experience.

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Koh Lipe is known to tourists as the Maldives of Thailand. Picture crystalline waters the color of a Scandinavian newborn’s sparkling blue eyes. It’s small enough that you could if there were a path, walk around the entire island in just a couple hours. There are no cars, no scooters for rent. Just tuk-tuks. 

It’s the kind of place where the daily grind is deciding what to eat and which beach to settle into for the day. The most activity I achieved in seven days was kayaking not very far and snorkeling a bit farther. The rest of the time I slept, ingested gallons of curry, sipped on gin and tonics, got 50 shades of brown darker, wandered up and down Walking Street in search of the tastiest coconut ice cream, and swam. 

Every morning I had breakfast looking out to Sunrise Beach, locally known as Haad Chao Ley. Longtail boats park here in the off-season, so you have to swim between them, but I didn’t mind. They make the landscape more colorful and picturesque. 

The sun rises between the two islands across from Koh Lipe, silhouetting everything in sight. The clouds resemble those in Renaissance paintings, the silver linings dramatizing each poof’s formation, and hang heavy over the islands. 

On the other end of Walking Street is Pattaya Beach. With its long stretch of velvety white sand and crystal clear waters, it’s the kind of beach that comes as the default background of a new computer. 

Normally, boats dock on Pattaya Beach but because it was the rainy season, all the longtail boats were on the other side of the island, leaving an unobstructed view of the Andaman Sea. When the sun sets, which is as early as 6 pm (when I was there in June), people migrate to this side of the island for happy hour. 

While Pattaya is the nicest beach, Sunset Beach tops as my favorite. The beach is sloped and bends where the island bends. There are no bungalows, no boats, no trees, no shade. With only other tiny islands and the expanse of the sea in view, you feel the distance from the rest of the world. 

Few people come to this beach during the day, but in the evening, they come here to watch the sun fade into the sea.

The day ends early in Koh Lipe. Evenings are spent chatting in our hammocks before retreating to our own bungalows for a full night’s sleep. The beds at Castaway Resort are so comfortable and mosquito-free that 8 hours of sleep is a nightly minimum. At 748 baht (24USD) a night, it’s affordable enough for backpackers to splurge on comfort and well-kept enough for a romantic getaway. I saw a few families, too. 

Normally I steer clear of group travel to eat, sleep, and walk at my own leisure. But for one whole week, I basked in the glory of meeting my friends from Turkey, China, and Italy on this dot of an island. I felt like the popular girl in school with her clique at the lunch table. But more than that, I felt extremely lucky to have friends willing to cross oceans for me.

As the ferry set off towards the mainland on my final day, I watched Koh Lipe get smaller and smaller in the distance. Even though I was suffering from sunstroke and was focused on not vomiting in the crowded boat, I got emotional. 

I was moved by the opportunity to stay on an island—an island—in Southeast Asia, where I spent my days with friends from different parts of the world and nights reading in my beachfront bungalow; in a place where longtail boats carry in supplies from the mainland and seafood dinners come straight from the source. I was moved by the fact that someone discovered this island far from “civilization” and made it home. All this amazing human capability made me teary-eyed.

But this was before I knew anything of Koh Lipe’s history–a history that is still living out its course. Only when I started doing research for this post did I realize what I had done: I had taken a precious experience for granted.

I regret traveling to a place uninformed and not aware of my impact. And I regret passing up an opportunity to connect with a special place. It’s too late for me to go back to Koh Lipe to change my actions. But if you plan to go, I hope you’ll take the time to learn about the island and get to know the Chao Ley people. If you do, I am confident you’ll leave your holiday appreciating every bit of it.

When my friend, Valentina, tipped the woman at the laundry shop (as opposed to using our foreign-owned hotel’s laundry service), I asked why she did so, since tipping is not customary in Asia. She told me what’s just one Euro for her may go a long way for the shopkeeper.

Every time we walked by the shop, thereafter, that woman greeted Valentina with a smile. Perhaps it was a smile that said, finally, someone who acknowledges and appreciates the cost of opening up our home to you.