I dropped anchor at Sunset Beach Ko Lipe at 12.30pm. A very pleasant sail. Ko Lipe is a small island, one of the Butang group of islands I used the Powerdive or hookah unit to dive and check the anchor in 8 metres of very clear water. I was also able to see the bottom of the boat so cleaned barnacles off the rudder, keel and prop. Other than some scarring on the front of the keel where we connected with a reef around the islands off Sumatra the condition of the bottom was not too bad. The day before leaving Telaga I had taken the dingy to a beach and scraped off the barnacles. The marine growth in this part of the world is phenomenal.In the evening I met up with some of the Aussie lads I’d met in Phuket when I was there three months before and had a few beers at a beach bar.
Christmas day I planned on meeting up with Steve from “Inesfail”. I first had a beer at the Boom Boom bar where Mr Man, who keeps an eye out for the dingies on the beach. While enjoying a quiet Singha beer and getting into the Christmas spirit a very happy, newly married bloke from South Carolina offered rum shots. There were only three people in the bar at the time. Against my better judgement and dismissing past painful experiences I accepted. And it was Christmas after all. As you can imagine it went down hill from there. One is supposed to learn from ones mistakes. However, this ‘one’ obviously doesn’t. It was a good afternoon and evening with Taylor, Lindsay, Elad and Andrea. I woke up on the boat on Boxing day morning feeling a little jaded. The roar of the unsilenced, ubiquitous long tail boats is almost enough to wake the dead. The tranquillity of the morning quickly evaporated as the long tail tripper boats take tourists about the Butang Islands.
There are many beach bars and resorts on Ko Lipe. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to do a pub crawl of all the beach bars and try to recall the bars that one may have frequented. I’m sure this has been attempted many times.
In my happy state on Christmas day I had offered Elad and Andrea a crew spot (I don’t take passengers) on Sadiqi heading toward Phuket. They had been staying at the Porn Resort in a small palm frond hut. On December 28 we loaded up their backpacks and headed toward Turatao island. There not being much wind we motor sailed most of the way. We anchored in the relative calm on the west side of Turatao island. Dinner on board was Thai massaman curry on a bed of rice with some cardboard Californian red wine – a pleasant evening.
