After the very sad news of Frankie's passing and attending his funeral we had no choice but to head off on our visa run. Time was running out for us and we only had 2 days left of our 90 day visa.
We already had our ferry booked to the most Southerly of all the Thai islands, Koh Lipe.
Koh Lipe is an island we have visited a couple of times before. The first time was over 6 years ago when it was a relatively unknown slice of paradise. Very quiet, with only a few places to stay and not over priced at all.
We returned there about 3 years ago and it had changed so much in that short space of time. Accommodation was double the price and the small island was much busier. We weren't sure what to expect this time but with our first few nights accommodation already booked we knew that prices had continued to rise. We hoped the island had lost non of it's stunning natural beauty and charm though.
The ferry ride over from Langkawi is short. Just 90 minutes gets you from Malaysia's most Northerly island to Thailand's most Southerly. We checked in at the ferry port and proceeded through immigration.
We had spoken with a lot of people who have done Visa runs from Langkawi and heard mixed stories on how tough Malaysian immigration are at the ferry ports here.
We were questioned quite a bit by the two guys at the desk. "You've stayed too long" they said. "No, we haven't, you get 90 days and we have only been here 88" we replied....."Yes but you've been here a bit long haven't you" he sternly responded. OK whatever dude, are you going to let us leave or not? They questioned us for 5 minutes, asking if we would be returning to Malaysia again and advising that if we did we should have a flight out of Malaysia already booked so that we could provide proof that we would be leaving. It was a bit of an annoyance but eventually they reluctantly stamped our passports and waved us through and on to the ferry.
90 minutes later we pulled up at the off shore jetty in the stunning turquoise waters of Koh Lipe. What a place Koh Lipe is.
You really can't beat a bit of Thai island life. It's like everything you see in the post cards or on TV and more. Koh Lipe looked as beautiful as we remembered it and we couldn't wait to get to our digs, drop our bags off and take a dip in the crystal clear cooling waters of the Andaman.
After a few hours relaxing on the beach, in the sea and taking in the first of many stunning sunsets we headed back to our hostel to get showered and head out for some food.
Koh Lipe, like any Thai island has it's share of "Reggae" chill out bars. You know the type. Some crudely built wooden hut with some red, gold and green adorning it and a bit of Bob Marley blasting out of a huge 90's style speaker. The last time we were here we used to spend most nights kicking back at Peace and Love bar on Pattaya beach. Unfortunately, as is often the case on ever changing islands, the bar no longer existed.
As I sat out the front of the hostel chatting with a few other travelers and one of the girls who worked there named "Sunny" (a standard name to give to Farang as her Thai name would be too hard to remember) I asked where I could find a chill out bar to go and relax in.
Sunny was just talking me through the various bars I should check out when a lad named Thomas from Italy appeared out of the hostel. As he sat down and lit his home made smoke I got chatting with him and he kindly offered to give me all of the smoke he had left! He had been in Thailand a while doing multiple dives to work towards his dive master qualification and he and his missus had bought way more produce than they could get through. I had a similar problem myself on Koh Phi Phi several years ago. It happens. It's more cost effective to buy in bulk then sometimes it's way more than you need for the length of your stay in Thailand.
Sure enough Thomas was a good lad and true to his word when he reappeared a few minutes later and handed me a box of goodies. This was brilliant. We had only been on the island a few hours, hadn't ventured out for the night yet and we already had some complimentary herbs that would last us the length of our stay. See, I told you you can't beat a bit of Thai island life. It's just so chilled out and civilized. The islands really are everything you expect them to be. Amazing beaches, stunning waters, beautiful sunsets and fantastic places to relax. You can party hard one night on a beach, drinking buckets of joy and watching fire shows then find a quiet beach the next night to relax and chill out on.
The days started to slip by. Relaxing on tropical beaches, taking dips in clear waters and then kicking back on a night after some great Thai food is so relaxing and it's easy for time to just slip past. Most nights we would sit on a street corner or outside the supermarket with a few beers watching the world go by. That's another great thing in Thailand. You can sit on a street corner or outside a 7-11 and enjoy a few sociable drinks with locals and other travelers. This wouldn't happen at home. You would either get moved on or some idiot kids would come and spoil it for everyone. Not in Thailand, it's relaxed enough to allow this and if anyone is an idiot everyone steps in and manages the situation themselves without the need for police to get involved. I like this life, it's how things should be.
We stayed in Lipe for 10 days. Originally we only intended to stay for 6 or 7, but every time we visit here we always extend our stay such is the beauty and draw of the island. We moved around a little and stayed at 3 different places during our stay. The first few nights at a hostel which was reasonably cheap, then a private room closer to sunrise beach and then back to a private room in a hostel for our final few nights. It was a sad moment when we came to leave but it's an expensive visa run when staying on Lipe so we had to head off to keep the spending down. We had found out that there was an international kite festival on in Satun, a smallish town on the mainland not far from the Malaysian border so we decided to go there for the weekend and check that out before making the trip back to Langkawi.
The boat from Lipe to Pakbara on the mainland is only small. It seats maybe 20 people and is one of those speed boats with 3 huge engines at the back. As we left the relatively calm shallow waters of Lipe and hit the deeper choppier waters of the Andaman things started to get a little scary.
The little boat flew up into the air before violently crashing down into the water. Then again....and again and again. We were sat directly behind the driver and every time he throttled back all 3 engines you knew what was coming. The sea looked like it was boiling. Whenever two peaks of a wave meet each other the height of the peak is magnified, the same process happens with troughs of waves, they drop down to the magnitude of the 2 troughs added together. The driver was doing his best, steering left and right constantly, shutting all 3 engines down when required but good old mother nature is a an absolute beast when she wants to be. Children and adults alike were throwing up behind us. Our bodies were flung into the air as we dropped from high peaks before being smashed back down into our seats. This went on for over an hour.
As we neared the coast of Koh Tarutao we turned North and were sheltered for a short while until we cleared the island and hit open water again. Everyone was drenched by this point and as well as flying into the air and crashing back down we started to experience some extreme sideways roll. Everyone had their life jackets on by this point and I think even the boat crew who experience this on a regular basis were concerned.
Eventually the mainland came into view and as we neared the boat terminal things started to settle down. This is easily the worst boat trip we have been on and not an experience we want to repeat. 3 hours of being smashed around in treacherous waters is not our idea of fun, but at least we made it.
Satun town is about an hours drive from the ferry point at Pakbara. We had read that it wouldn't cost a lot in a local bus or shared taxi to get there. As we walked out of the ferry terminal the streets were deserted. A few other people from our boat, all locals were heading to their cars that they had parked up.
The only place that we could see that was open was a small shop for the ferry operator whose boat we had just taken. We asked them about a taxi and were quoted 700 Baht, 700! That's ten times what we had read it should be so we obviously declined.
We tried to find some free WiFi hotspot so that we could find a ride using the Grab app but there weren't any. We already had our digs booked in Satun but it was looking like we were going to have to spend the night somewhere in Pakbara.
Just as we were about to start walking into town I spotted the only other Western guy that had been on our boat walking over to a truck with two Thai girls that had been with him. They started throwing their bags into the back of the truck and I asked if they were headed towards Satun. The guys didn't say a word at all, just gave us a strange kind of stare so I assumed he didn't speak English. The two girls English wasn't great but I showed them Satun on my map. Eventually and what appeared to be reluctantly they nodded so we threw our bags as well as ourselves into the back of the truck.
We were on our way. With the sun setting behind us we made ourselves as comfortable as we could in the truck and checked the map every so often to see if we were heading anywhere near Satun.
After about half an hours driving we pulled into a petrol station so I got some money out to pay for the petrol. The Western guy hopped out and suddenly started talking to us in perfectly good English. He was American and refused to take any money for the petrol. Why didn't you speak to us before when we first asked for a lift you weirdo? But hey we were headed towards Satun and apparently this was a free ride, so can't complain.
After another 15 minutes we pulled off the highway into some kind of resort. We hopped out and thanked all 3 of them. From here we could probably get a taxi easily into Satun.
The American guy said that this was where he was staying. One of the girls opened the door to a car that was parked up and they told us they would take us the rest of the way in this car. Brilliant! This was working out quite well given that a while ago it looked like we were either going to pay a fortune for a taxi or would be spending the night in Pakbara and lose the money we had paid for our Satun digs.
Five minutes down the road it started going not so well. The American dude was your typical loud mouthed sleaze. The one driving is my ex-girlfriend.....the other is my current girlfriend.....man, she gets me so hard every day....look at the body, just look, she's amazing isn't she. In between all this he's shouting random things in Thai at the girls who choose to ignore him. What an absolute dick this guy is.
The girls ask where we are staying, pop it into Google maps and 10 minutes later we are being dropped off at the reception of the guesthouse we are staying at. Amazing.
The girls were lovely and polite and friendly as we thanked them, so nice. The guy was still being a dick but hey we had just caught a free ride to the doorstep of our digs so a great result.
With our check in complete and our bags thrown in our room we headed straight out for food. Dani really wanted to head to a place called "Bobby's Pizza" that she had read was very good. It's not very often we treat ourselves to Western food and despite the food in Asia being amazing every so often you need that little fix of something homely.
Bobby's was only a 5 minute walk from our digs and thankfully it was open when we got there.
We sat down, ordered and then got chatting to Bobby the Scouser. Bobby is a great bloke and his craic was great. He used to live in Langkawi himself a few years back and sure enough he knows most of our friends there. Billy and Jane, Daniel from Bamboo-ba. It's a small world at times.
We finished our pizza washed down with a few icy cold bottles of Chang then Bobby started putting beer after beer in front of us. The night slipped by as we sat chatting with Bobby and his mates and before we knew it it was 3:00 am and our table was littered with empty bottles. We paid up and Bobby refused to take any extra money for all the beers he had been plying us with. What a gent this guy was. He gave us a lift back to our digs as well. It was quite the day. Everything just fell into place once we got of the boat of doom in Pakbara. Sometimes things just come together when your traveling and this was one of those days.
The following morning we were a little fuzzy thanks to Bobby's hospitality but we were still eager to go and check the kite festival out. The festival was at an old airfield not far out of town so we rented a motorbike from our guesthouse for a couple of quid and headed off.
The festival was pretty cool, with teams attending from all over the world. I didn't realise flying kites in teams was a thing until we came here. The daytime was mainly various big and colourful kites in the main field. Giant squid, Incredible Hulk, a bright orange carp, even Sponge Bob Square Pants was there! There were some very nice kites on display.
The food at the festival was great as well. Row after row of pretty much every Thai dish you could imagine, it was as much a festival of food as it was of kites. The only thing I wish is that Thailand would adopt the same ban on single use plastic that Bali now has. In Bali if you go to the shop and you don't take your own bag you have to buy a recycled cloth bag or carry everything in your hands. No choice, non of this 'can still get a plastic bag for 5p' nonsense that we still have at home, just a blanket ban on all single use plastic. At the festival we got a fruit juice in a plastic cup, with a plastic straw and then the lady who served us was about to put the cup into a plastic bag! Really? My drink is already in a container, why do I need to carry it in yet another plastic item....lunacy, and it needs to change.
So enough of the soap box chat and back to the kites.
As the sun headed down and the light went we wondered why yet more people were still arriving and the place was really filling up. Half the town must have been here, and also people from all over Thailand as we found out while chatting to a nice guy from Chang Mai. We didn't really imagine that night time kite flying would be a thing....but we were wrong.
As the sky turned to an inky black, the music was cranked up and spotlights were dragged out to the edge of the field. We had read up as best we could as to what the various events at the festival were. Highest kite.....best noise from a kite (yes some made some fairly interesting sounds due to their design!) and also best display team to music. The best display to music was done at night with spot lights lighting up the kites brilliant colours against the black back drop. It was really impressive to see and there were some fantastic displays. Some were just two kites dancing with each other to the music, some consisted of four doing routines that the Red Arrows would be proud of. The final entrant was two strings with many kites attached to each string, in the red, white and blue colours of the Thai flag, it was genuinely great to experience and we are glad we spotted this event and made the effort to get to it.
With the show over and some tasty street food treats in our day pack we rode back to our digs and chilled out for the rest of the night. Bobby's was shut for the night so we settled for a few Sang Som's and coke in our room before getting our heads down.
The next day was a lazy affair. Sorting through photos, grabbing a bite to eat and catching up with people back home. Bobby's was open again that night though so it would have been rude not to pop in for a few beers, some pizza and a bit craic on.
We didn't go crazy on the beers as we had to be early the next morning to catch our ride from Satun to Kuala Perlis ferry port in Malaysia. It was time to head back to the shelter.
The next morning we were a little nervous when we reached Malaysian immigration given that they advised us to have flights booked out in order to enter again and we had done nothing about this at all.
We needn't have worried though. Immigration lasted literally 10 seconds. Passport handed over, finger print scan done and passport stamped and handed back. Not a single question at all, we breezed straight back into Malaysia with another 3 month visa.
A few hours later we had caught the ferry at Kuala Perlis, covered the short distance over the water to Langkawi and hopped in a taxi back to the animal shelter. Our visa run was over. 12 nights in Thailand had flown past and it felt like we had never been away. Back to the dogs and cats it is.
