AnaMarwan.com

What do you do when you haven’t gone somewhere in about 3 months and you’ve become incredibly restless? You go on an impromptu trip to Koh Lipe, Thailand. I didn’t expect Balqis to agree to it but when I randomly suggested this trip she jumped on it, thinking I could secure flights for her.

Unfortunately, we have something called the embargo period so when I couldn’t get flights for her, we decided to take a 6-hour bus ride all the way to Kuala Perlis. Which wasn’t that bad, to be honest; I managed to drift off to sleep even when our bus driver was talking to his co-driver at the top of his lungs.

12 hours later (6-hour bus ride + 1 1/2-hour wait for our ferry + 1 1/2-hour ferry ride to Langkawi + 1-hour wait for our next ferry + 2-hour ferry ride to Koh Lipe), we arrived at Pattaya Beach. It was so hot, yet the beach looked so inviting — I felt the urge to jump off from our tail boat and into the water (I was advised not to because, well, I’m not the best swimmer out there).

After immigration, we took a cab out to Gipsy Resort, where we booked ourselves the beach bungalow for two nights. Everything about the place is great. Our bungalow was only about 5 metres away from the beach; at night, we could hear the waves crashing onto the shore. Sounds cheesy but it definitely lulled us to sleep. We wanted to stay in our bungalows the minute we checked in (“What, WHY? YOU’RE ON VACATION!?!?!?!111?!1/!?” Well, we kinda sorta had a 12-hour journey to reach there so……) but instead of unpacking our bags, we changed into our swimwear and went straight into the sea. SO GOOD.

We didn’t do much on the first night there. Apart from the obligatory Thai foot massage (which was amazing, when is it NOT amazing to get a massage in Thailand????) and nom-ing on banana Nutella Thai pancakes with a side of Thai iced coffee (if I could move to Thailand for one thing, it’ll be for their iced coffee), we booked ourselves a snorkelling trip for the next day.

Now, I’ve mentioned earlier that I’m not the best swimmer out there (in fact, I don’t really know how to swim apart from flailing about in the water?), so you can bet your ass I was quite hesitant about it. But I decided to be all YOLO about it and went for it anyway. The next day came around and next thing I know, we spent 8 hours at the sea. EIGHT! We covered 4 snorkelling spots and 3 islands from 9.30am till 5pm. Our guide even gave us two extra spots, God bless him.

If you’ve never gone on a snorkelling trip before, I highly encourage you to go at least once in your life. Even if you can’t swim. Because you won’t regret it. I was so in awe with the view underwater, something you never get to see every day, and it really does make you realise that the world is so vast and you’re not the only living creatures on this planet.

After being marinated thoroughly with sea water, we went back to our bungalow to freshen up before heading to Walking Street for our last rendezvous. I got yet another massage, this time, it was the soothing, sunburn massage (basically the masseuse slathered a shit ton of Aloe Vera all over my body) because I obviously needed it — the shade of my skin was comparable to a lobster’s. We spent the rest of the night watching Gladiator at Pooh’s Bar. There’s nothing like watching Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix battling out to their deaths while sipping on orange juice on a windy night. (The night before the same bar was playing Jaws. Very appropriate for those who came here for a stress-free getaway by the beach.)

All in all, this was exactly what I wanted when I said I wanted to get away from the city. And for someone who rarely enjoys spontaneous trips, I surprisingly had a freakin’ good time. I’ll definitely come back to Koh Lipe someday… I don’t think I had enough of it. If I were to open up the dictionary and search for the word “paradise”, Koh Lipe would be the definition. It’s that beautiful there.