There is this feeling on Koh Lipe: you are at the end point of the journey, there is no greater beauty anywhere, this is the peak. Of course, there are thousands of fantastic places in the world: stunning islands, popular and hidden, as well as amazing mountains, jungles, lakes, volcanoes, glaciers, underwater worlds... But they are all of the same level as Koh Lipe. Simply because beauty cannot ring louder than on this island. 😀
Sunrise Beach in front of the tiny Ko Usen Island
These are images from my recent trip to Koh Lipe, a four-kilometer-square island in the Indian Ocean.
Koh Lipe on the Google.Maps
It has several beaches, the largest of them are Pattaya, Sunrise and Sunset beaches. The first is great but there should be a place for marine transportation hassle, right?, and this is what Pattaya Beach does. Sunset Beach is fantastic but isn't that large, and it's remote from the tourist heart of Koh Lipe. Sunrise Beach is where most tourists sunbath and swim. And probably this beach is the most beautiful among those listed.
If you have visited some popular resort areas, you know that "all people sunbath and swim there" might mean a disaster... For example, I remember visiting a seaside town on the Adriatic Sea coast in 2011. The number of sunbathers was overwhelming, there was a feeling that this beach was sick, like a dog, all covered with ticks. But in marvelous Koh Lipe this is different:
No crowd on the most popular Sunrise Beach, just empty spaces of amazing sand and water...
At least, in April during Thai Songkran holidays...
It's a sort of paradox but the best time of visiting of Sunrise beach is rather hours in the afternoon and evening. This is when the sun shines from behind you (when you are on the beach) and creates the effect of especially transparent and colorful turquoise water. At sunrise hours, you'll see rather blinding rays of the rising sun and almost white surface of the sea. Which is also good for sunrise-lovers and black-and-white photography. But we didn't came to shoot bw, we wanted the full power saturation 😀
Closer to the sunset, the water's color becomes less vibrant and, at the time when the sun sets behind the seaside vegetation, everything turns dimmer and grayer. And this means light tropical coolness so much needed after an active day in the sun... Saying coolness, of course, I mean temperatures around +32°C / 87 °F 😀
Local people becomes more active at this time.
On April 11 right at this time, I gave up snorkeling and walked with a camera along the coast just to have time for shooting people of Koh Lipe on the Sunrise Beach. All soaked in water and salt, covered with sand, in only wet swimming trunks, I was walking with a large camera in my hands in search of beauty, luxuriating in a 32-degree coolness. 😁
Boats were coming back to the shore.
Boatmen were disembarking directly into the water.
holding begs over the head... (I and my camera were spotted, and look at the reaction - smiling!)
Time to check boat engines for men
And time to straighten your back on the beach watching social media on mobile.
Or just to sit on the beach with mates showing off your tattoos.
Amazing kids
And amazing pets.
But that resident of Sunrise Beach came as a surprise to me:
A heron was sneaking between moored boats, empty at this hour.
She was fishing standing on fishing nets but sometimes she was checking what was in boats.
I was taking images of this feathered creature from the water - it was a very far to the bird, my telephoto lens (70-300mm) wasn't sufficient. The sea was sloshing almost at the level of my chest.
At last, the bird left the scene gifting me this beautiful farewell shot.
Gorgeous, stunning, magnificent island. If, one day, I come back, I'll be a happy person.
More stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out the previous ones on my personal Pinmapple map.
I took all the images in the post with a Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G and a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on April 11, 2023 in Koh Lipe, Thailand.
