Koh Lipe, Thailand: The Offbeat Island Where I Watched the Best Sunset of My Life

The first thing I remember about Koh Lipe is the colour.

Not the pier, not the luggage, not the crowd of backpackers stepping off the boat with us. The colour. As our speedboat cut across the Andaman Sea, the water kept changing: deep navy, then sapphire, then a clear, glowing turquoise so bright it looked lit from underneath. By the time the island came into view, I had stopped taking photos. I just sat there with Biren, staring, because some places you need to look at with your own eyes first.

This is the story of the two days we spent on Koh Lipe, a tiny island at the very southern tip of Thailand, close to the Malaysian border and to Langkawi. It’s the place I now tell everyone about. And it’s the island we’ve promised ourselves we will go back to.

Why we skipped the usual Thailand trail

When most people plan a trip to Thailand, the list writes itself: Bangkok, Phuket, Krabi, Pattaya, maybe Chiang Mai. They’re popular for good reasons. But Biren and I had 20–25 days in Thailand, and we knew what kind of travellers we are. We don’t enjoy ticking off sights in a crowd. We wanted nature, marine life, quiet beaches, and the kind of peace you can actually feel.

So we made a few decisions early. We skipped Pattaya completely. And I spent evenings reading blogs and forums, looking for offbeat places in Thailand, the non-touristy islands that don’t show up on every package itinerary.

One name kept coming up, always with the same words around it: quiet, clear water, no cars, sunsets. Koh Lipe. A small island in the Tarutao National Marine Park that most people visiting Thailand have never heard of. That settled it.

The journey: Bangkok to Koh Lipe by train, road and sea

Part of what makes Koh Lipe feel so special is that it takes a little effort to reach. There’s no airport on the island, and no bridge. You arrive by water, or not at all.

We started in Bangkok with the long-distance train south to Hat Yai, the biggest city in southern Thailand. It’s a long ride (roughly 15 hours), but I love trains for exactly that reason. You watch the country change outside the window: city turning into rice fields, rice fields into palm plantations, the air getting warmer and heavier the further south you go.

From Hat Yai we took a shared minivan, the way most locals and backpackers travel, down to Pak Bara pier on the Satun coast. And from Pak Bara, a fast speedboat across the open sea to Koh Lipe, about an hour and a half.

That last stretch is where the magic starts. Small islands rise out of the water on both sides. The sea gets clearer and bluer with every minute. By the time you slow down near Koh Lipe, you’re looking at a shade of turquoise you’ve probably only seen on a screensaver.

Coming from Malaysia? Koh Lipe is very close to Langkawi. In season, ferries run from Langkawi to Koh Lipe in about 90 minutes, which makes it easy to combine Thailand and Malaysia in one trip.

Arriving on an island with no cars

The moment the engine stopped, it was quiet. Properly quiet.

At the small landing point, bags were piled high, because a whole boatful of travellers from all over the world had arrived with us. You leave your luggage there for a moment, show your ticket, and pay the arrival fees: the Tarutao National Park entrance fee (200 baht for foreign adults, valid for several days) plus a small pier fee of around 20 baht. Then you collect your bags and walk onto the island.

And that’s when it hit me. There are no cars on Koh Lipe. No traffic, no honking, no rush. The whole island is barely two square kilometres. You can walk from one side to the other, and honestly cover most of it on foot in a day.

The only vehicles you’ll see are little motorbike sidecar taxis, tiny open carts attached to a bike, used mostly to carry luggage or to drop someone from one end of the island to the other. Everyone else walks, barefoot half the time. With so little traffic, the air feels clean and the island feels slow, in the best possible way.

As we walked inland, Koh Lipe unfolded like a storybook. Tiny cafes with handwritten menus. Cute hostels and homestays. Boutique resorts with hand-painted wooden signboards. Smoothie stalls, dive shops, hammocks, flowers spilling over fences. Every corner looked like it had been designed by someone who really loved the place. I remember turning to Biren and saying, “It feels like we’ve walked into another world.”

Castaway Resort Koh Lipe: wood, thatch and the sea

We stayed at Castaway Resort, right on Sunrise Beach, and I still think about it. It’s one of the oldest and best-loved resorts on Koh Lipe, and only about a five-minute walk from Walking Street, yet it feels miles away from everything.

Castaway is built the old island way, with natural materials and traditional Thai design: wooden bungalows with thatched roofs, wood-and-bamboo decks, and hardwood floors. The cottages are spread far apart among tall trees, so walking in felt less like entering a hotel and more like entering a little forest village. We followed a sandy path between the bungalows until it opened onto the beach, where the reception and restaurant sat on a breezy wood-and-bamboo terrace right above the sand.

The team welcomed us with a cold drink and asked us to sit. So we did, and we didn’t want to get up. In front of us: blue water, people strolling along the shore, a few swimmers, longtail boats rocking gently in the shallows. Nobody was in a hurry. That set the tone for our whole stay.

Our room was one of Castaway’s two-storey wooden bungalows. Downstairs, a spacious bathroom to the right and space for our bags. A wooden staircase led up to the bedroom: soft, light curtains, a mosquito net over the bed, warm wood everywhere, and little touches like woven hill-tribe blankets and fabric lanterns. The bungalows are designed to catch the sea breeze, so instead of an AC humming all night, you get the wind through the trees. Then there’s the balcony, with a hammock, looking straight into the resort’s trees like a mini forest, with glimpses of the blue sea beyond. I could have spent the whole two days in that hammock.

Beyond the room, Castaway has its own dive centre, plus yoga, Thai massage, and kayaks and snorkel gear to rent, with a calm, roped-off swimming area right in front of the bungalows.

Vegan food that we didn’t want to stop eating

The best surprise? The food. The menu at Castaway was full of vegan dishes, and as vegetarians travelling in Thailand, where so much of the food uses fish sauce or meat, this felt like a gift. We ate vegan burgers and vegan patties, crispy French fries, fresh fruit juices and genuinely great coffee, sitting on that wooden terrace with the sea in front of us. Everything tasted fresh and made with care, and we never once had to ask, “Is there fish sauce in this?”

If you’re vegan or vegetarian in Thailand, Koh Lipe is one of the easiest islands we found to eat well.

Walking Street, giant coconuts and the island’s creative soul

In the evening we went out to explore Koh Lipe Walking Street, the narrow lane that runs through the middle of the island. It’s small, but it’s full of personality: thrift stalls, souvenir shops, handmade jewellery, flowy island clothes and quirky little things made by the people who live here. It didn’t feel like a tourist market selling the same thing on every corner. It felt creative and local.

And the coconuts! Thai coconuts are something else: huge, cold and sweet. We walked with one each in hand, sipping slowly, stopping at every stall that caught our eye.

The best sunset of my life

Then we walked across the island to Sunset Beach to watch the sun go down. I want to be honest about how much this moment meant to me.

I’ve watched sunsets in the mountains, in deserts, over cities and over the sea. But the sunset on Koh Lipe is the best sunset I have ever seen. I say this to everyone. I’ll probably say it in every blog I ever write.

The sky didn’t just turn orange. It turned red, a deep, glowing red spreading across the whole horizon. Birds flew across it in long lines. The sun slipped lower and lower into a sea that was still impossibly blue underneath all that colour. The water, the sky and the silence all came together at once, and for a few minutes, nobody on that beach said anything.

We didn’t leave when the sun disappeared. We stayed until the red faded to purple, then to darkness. Only then did we slowly walk back through Walking Street, wander through the quieter corners of the island, and go back to our villa to sleep with the sound of the sea.

Sunrise, smoothie bowls and doing absolutely nothing

Koh Lipe is so small that you can watch the sun set on one side and rise on the other. The next morning we woke early and walked out onto Sunrise Beach and watched the day begin: soft pink light, calm water, longtail boats bobbing near the shore.

Breakfast was smoothie bowls and fresh juice at a little cafe. Then we just walked, slowly, with no plan, exploring the parts of the island we hadn’t seen yet. Back at the resort we spent the afternoon in the shade, in and out of the water, listening to birds chirping in the trees. It sounds like nothing. It was everything.

Snorkeling and scuba diving in Koh Lipe

If you love the ocean, Koh Lipe is a dream. It sits in the Tarutao National Marine Park, one of the richest marine areas in Thailand, with coral reefs and tropical fish right off its beaches. Our resort even had its own dive centre, and we watched guests sign up, train and head out for their first scuba dive in Thailand. Snorkeling trips to the nearby islands leave every day too.

We had planned to go snorkeling, but honestly, we ran out of time. We chose to spend it on the beach instead, in the shacks, in the water, soaking in the peace. I don’t regret it, but it’s the first thing on our list for next time.

Why two days were not enough

Somewhere on that second afternoon, Biren and I looked at each other and said the same thing: two days is not enough for Koh Lipe.

We had come there as tourists, rushing in and rushing out, and that’s not how we like to travel. Koh Lipe deserves slowness. It deserves a week of walking, swimming, snorkeling, sunsets, and long conversations over coconut water.

So we made a promise. We don’t know when, but we’re going back to Koh Lipe, and next time we’re staying much longer.

Koh Lipe at a glance

If you’re looking for the real Thailand

Thailand is so much more than its famous names. Somewhere at the bottom of the map, past the cities and the crowds, there’s a tiny island with no cars, turquoise water, wooden villas under the trees, and a sky that turns red every evening.

If you want peace, nature and a place that makes you slow down, go to Koh Lipe. And when you’re standing on that beach at sunset, think of us, because we’ll be planning our way back.

Have you been to Koh Lipe, or are you planning a trip? Ask me anything in the comments.