We boarded the fast ferry at Kuah pier and took a seat in the spacious cabin inside. Since there were only about 10 people on the ferry we had plenty of space to stretch out and the hour long journey to Koh Lipe passed in unremarkable air conditioned comfort.

When we felt the boat slow down, we peered out the salt-encrusted portholes and caught a glimpse of crystal clear turquoise water in a pretty, curved bay of white sand lined with the huts and bungalows of beach resorts. The hatch on the ferry was opened and we climbed out into a large longtail, a wooden boat with a combined propeller shaft and rudder extending out the back. This conveyed us to the shore, where we hopped out into the warm surf and walked up onto the soft sand.

Once off the longtail we paid a visit to the nearby immigration hut, right on the beach. We got a 15 day visa stamped into our passports and then picked up our bags and set off down the beach to find some accommodation. We had a place in mind, at the far end of the beach on a hill overlooking the length of the bay. Accordingly, we wandered the 800m or so down the sand, passing loads of basic bungalow accommodation, chilled out bamboo beach bars and massage spas.

When we reached the heaped rocky hill at the end of the beach, with bungalows perched on concrete stilts above us, we enquired as to how we reached Brothers', the place we wanted to check out. We were directed by a local man to a rickety wooden walkway clinging to the rocks of the headland jutting into the water to our left. We clambered up some rocks and followed the walkway, curving around the headland then along a path through some trees until we popped out on another little beach round the corner.

Here, we found a reception desk and enquired whether we had reached Brothers'. The lady at the desk said no, but as the place looked nice we asked to check out one of their huts. We were shown to a basic hut with a balcony looking out through a rocky gap back towards the bigger beach, Pattaya beach. The price quoted was 1000 baht which worked out at over £20, so we therefore decided to have a look at some other places before making up our mind in case there was anything better and/or cheaper. We asked the lady how we reached Brothers' and she indicated that the bungalows perched on a steep hill above us were Brothers', but to get there we'd need to walk back around the walkway then up some steep concrete steps we'd seen at the end of Pattaya beach.

I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of walking all the way back 'round, so I scrambled straight up the hillside to the bungalows while Lucy made her way back along the walkway. At the top of the hill I found lots of bungalows with a great view out over the sea, but unfortunately they were all locked up, along with one which a sign proclaimed to be the reception.

Dismayed, I climbed back down the steps to Pattaya beach, where I nipped into the restaurant of a nearby accommodation to enquire whether Brothers' was indeed open. The young girl I tried to question was utterly bemused by my enquiry, so changing tack, I asked out of interest how much the bungalows on stilts with the great view were. I was told to my surprise they ranged from 400 to 600 baht, far cheaper than the place we'd seen round the corner.

I asked the girl if we could have a look at the huts and, after much scrambling up and down concrete steps and hillsides, we selected a very basic bungalow on concrete legs high above the beach with a fantastic view from its balcony all the way down Pattaya beach, for only 500 baht.

Chuffed with our discovery, we dropped our bags in the room and went to the open air restaurant area of the accommodation set back off the beach in amongst tangled ficus trees. We took a seat and ordered some tom yam soup and spicy noodles as well as a coconut shake and fresh pineapple juice. Whilst waiting for our food, we noticed across the garden that there was a monkey attached by means of a long leash to a rope strung between two trees. We watched amused as the monkey capered back and forth, and our amusement turned to surprised delight when one of the women working at the place carried over a big bucket full of soapy water and placed it on the ground, only for the monkey to leap in and start bathing itself.

With this amusing show in the background, we ate our absolutely delicious lunch, the coconut shake being a particular highlight having been made from a coconut we watched the staff cut down from a tree in the garden.

After our repast, we walked along the beach, from our end which was quite quiet to the slightly busier central section. Here, we took a turn off up the paved 'walking street' which cut through the island to the centre. More just a paved concrete path than a street, the thoroughfare was lined with numerous shops stocked with convenience items and beach accessories as well as innumerable cosy bamboo-built restaurants and bars and many massage spas.

We followed the street, being sure to stay out of the way of the occasional motorbikes and sidecars which made up the island's only traffic and picked up some necessities along the way like sun cream and some shower gel. We ended up following the street, and a subsequent dirt path all the way to a long beach on the east side of the small island, Sunrise beach. The distance was only a bit more than a kilometre from our beach to this one.

At Sunrise beach we found a shady bar and sat with a beer, watching some rather ominous grey clouds gathering on the distant horizon, across the bright turquoise water. After our drink, we followed the paths back to Pattaya beach in the hot sunshine, and along the sand to our bungalow. I went for a quick dip in the sea, just as the wind picked up and the grey clouds began to close in overhead. As I came out of the water, the rain started to fall and we passed the next while sitting on our balcony watching the rain and catching up on our reading and blogging. While we sat, eating some 'Mr. Potato Crisps' Pringles-alikes, a cute white dog came up and sat at the foot of the wooden steps onto our balcony, looking pleadingly at us. We deterred her from coming up onto the balcony but didn't have the heart to shoo her off completely as she was so cute and not doing any harm. Thus she spent the rest of the afternoon sitting alongside us.

In the early evening, with the rain abated and the island beginning to light up after sundown, we set off down the beach to find some dinner. We once again ended up on the walking street, and followed it about halfway up to Pooh's, a large restaurant and bar which had free wifi and, along with a number of other restaurants along the strip, had a BBQ on that evening. We took a seat at one of the outdoor tables in an attractive sort of garden setting, and ordered BBQ chicken. This turned out to be great, and was accompanied by a baked potato, garlic bread and a plate we could fill at a salad bar.

After our meal we made our way back down the walking street, then stopped off at a spa where Lucy wanted to get some waxing done. As the waxing lady was busy, we had to kill some time so nipped to a little place across the path where we shared a plate of utterly awesome mango with coconut milk sticky rice. We'd been fantasising about this dessert since leaving Thailand and were so happy to eat it again.

After our dessert Lucy went for her waxing while I waited in the seating area of the spa watching the foot traffic on the path and amusing myself playing Angry Birds. As I was in the process of lining up a devastating shot in the game, I heard a voice exclaim my name and looked up to see our friends Jeroen and Linde, from whom we had parted ways in George Town. Only hours before, Lucy had said how funny it would be if we ran into the couple on the island, to which I replied that it would neither surprise nor faze me in the least, having had so many such odd coincidences along the way on our trip.

I sat chatting with the pair while Lucy's waxing was completed, then Lucy, Linde and I walked back to the beach to have a drink while Jeroen had a massage. The three of us took up a seat on comfy cushioned mats on the sand just up from the surf and blethered away until Jeroen joined us. We discovered that our friends had booked tickets to leave for Koh Lanta the following day so we wouldn't get to spend much time with them, but would perhaps run into them again further up the coast.

Around half 11 we decided it was time to head back to our bungalow since I needed to catch up on sleep, having had too many late nights and an early start that morning. We said our goodbyes to Jeroen and Linde and left them to walk back across the island to Sunset beach where they were staying, while we struck out for our place down the thin strip of sand left by the high tide.

Back at our bungalow we made ourselves comfortable on the bed with our overhead fan on, and were soon out for the count after a long but fun day.

The next morning we woke around half 8 to a glorious sunny scene outside our window. We dressed and nipped down to the restaurant where we had breakfast looking out over the bay with an incredibly cute little faun puppy with a crippled front leg for company. After breakfast we climbed back up the gnarly, uneven conrete steps to our balcony where we installed ourselves to watch over the beach for a bit.

When we became restless, we went for a walk along the shore, stopping for me to sign up for some dives the next day, then up the walking street, until we got to Elephant Cafe. We had noticed the day before that they had a sign outside advertising toasted cheese with real cheddar cheese, one of the things we were really missing from home. We ordered one each, and a pineapple juice, and tucked in. Whether it was because we hadn't had proper toasted cheese for so long or it really had some magical quality, we thought it was probably the best toasted cheese we'd ever had.

While we were eating we noticed that the cafe had a selection of board games so we played a couple of games of Connect 4. Lucy beat me both times, thanks to a combination of cunning strategies and my stupidity. Seeing her planning her moves the way she did, I suggested that she let me show her the basics of chess, which I had been trying in vain to do for most of the trip. Today, for whatever reason, she caved and we soon had a board set up. I explained the moves each piece could make and the objective of the game, in other words my complete knowledge of chess, and we began a game. Lucy picked up the basics quickly and although she put up a fight I ended up getting her in checkmate.

After our game we bought some extra beach towels at a shop then walked back to our bungalow. I nipped upstairs to get my snorkelling gear while Lucy went into the water for a dip. When I got back down, I swam out over the flat, shallow sandy bottom until I found some coral and was pleasantly surprised to find it absolutely teeming with life. I swam around between the numerous outcrops of coral and saw all manner of marine life in a short time including huge, alien-looking spiky anemones; clown fish hiding in their waving anemones; grumpy-looking puffer fish being cleaned by cleaner wrass; colourful parrot fish chomping away at the coral; bright blue starfish and the highlight, a stingray which I startled and which shot off the bottom in a puff of sand and soared off across the coral with that beautiful, elegant, undulating motion common to its species.

After floating around for a bit, we got out of the water, just as the sky began to get grey and spits of rain began to fall, at the same time as the day before. I grabbed a beer from the restaurant and we climbed back up to the balcony. Lucy had a shower then we sat out watching the activity on the beach with a cold Chang. It wasn't long before we saw a familiar face bounding across the beach and, seconds later, appearing at the steps up to our balcony. It was the cute white dog from the day before who, with her plaintive whining and general cuteness, this time won an invitation to come up onto the balcony where she promptly lay down on the planks, stretched extensively, sighed profoundly, and dropped off into what looked like a very relaxing sleep, without giving us any hassle.

I wrote the blog and Lucy read for a while, before we got hungry and wandered down the beach to one of the prettily lit restaurants on the sand. At our chosen place we had a great meal of coconut curry soup with prawns and sweet and sour chicken as well as some awesome chicken curry spring rolls. We took a polystyrene tub of mango with coconut sticky rice with us back to the bungalow, where Lucy went in to read in bed while I sat out on the balcony, watching the moon rise over the bay with the sound of the waves below.

After eating our dessert a while later, we both went to bed and got off to sleep.

The next morning we got up reasonably early, to find the sunlight of a beautiful morning streaming through the window. I got my stuff together to go diving, then went down to the restaurant to get some breakfast. I found out we could have this delivered to our balcony so ordered some fresh fruit, toast, tea and fruit juice and nipped back upstairs. Soon we had our breakfast and sat out on the balcony eating it.

I wolfed down the last of my breakfast and then walked along the sand to the dive shop, where I found my gear prepared in a box for me and a few other people waiting outside the shop. Soon a longtail boat pulled in to the shore, with more people already on board. We hopped in and were taken out to the bigger dive boat, which then set off to the West of Koh Lipe. As we left the bay, we got a great view of the larger islands looming up behind the smaller Koh Lipe and the ocean shimmering all around us in the sun. We cruised for about an hour, preparing our gear on the way, until we reached a little rocky island in a channel between two larger islands. I was going to be diving with a Dutch couple and a Slovakian guy along with a divemaster, Eric. After a quick brieifing, we got on our equipment, and hopped off the boat into the lovely cool sea.

We swam a short distance away from the boat then descended to the sandy bottom a short distance away from the rocks of the island. While the two guys got a short refresher lesson from Eric, the Dutch girl Caroline and I swam around on the sandy bottom, finding a strong current pulling around the island. We saw loads of the usual tropical fish, as well as a stingray, before circling around to rejoin our group. All together, we then set off around one side of the island. As we emerged from the side of the island, we felt the current rushing through the channel begin to pull as along. We hardly had to move a fin, and just cruised along, picking up more and more speed as we passed huge rocky outcrops encrusted with coral and with colourful tropical fish swimming everywhere.

Once we had ridden this underwater rollercoaster to the far end of the island, we cut across the current into the sheltered area on the far side of the island. Here, we were able to swim around at a gentler pace and take more time to observe the underwater life. We saw plenty of great fish, including a spiky, poisonous lion fish hiding in a rocky gap, and a very pale moray eel coiled beneath a rock with its grumpy looking face poking out.

Because I had used up quite a bit of air in my battle against the current near the start of the dive, I began to run low and, for the last bit of the dive, used Eric's reserve regulator so we could stay down a bit longer. After a safety stop at 5m for a few minutes, we ascended to the surface.

We should have been picked up almost straight away, but instead watched as the dive boat sailed at least 500m away, through the channel, before coming back to pick us up. We later learned that two of our larger party , who insisted on diving the site on their own despite it being their firs time there, had been swept away by the current and thus ended up so far away.

Once we were all back on board, most people scrambled up onto the flat roof of the boat where there was a covered area. We were soon brought polystyrene boxes of rice and some delicious chicken in a peppery, sweet sauce. We ate this, as well as some slices of watermelon, then the boat set off to our next dive site at another small island nearby.

By the time we had sorted the equipment, eaten lunch and sailed over to the other site it was after 2 o'clock. We had another briefing with Eric about this site, then got ready and got into the water. This time we swam around the tip of the island before descending to about 15m. There was barely any current here, so we were able to take a very leisurely, relaxing swim along the base of a sloping wall of huge boulders and slabs of stone, with all manner of beautiful soft corals growing from it and fish cruising everywhere. At points the wall looked almost like a hillside covered in heather, covered with one particular soft coral had purple edges to its waving, white fronds.

After swimming the length of the island, we moved up the wall and then back along at a shallower depth, where the light from the sun penetrating through the water was beautiful. During the dive we saw two more lion fish, a large scorpion fish lying almost camouflaged on the sand under a rock, a big trigger fish which we avoided due to their defensive nature, which can result in them attacking people and the biggest moray eel I have ever seen, whose head was at least the size of a rugby ball and would have been 3 or 4m long, though its body was coiled in the rocks behind its frowning mouth.

After a thoroughly enjoyable dive, we ascended towards the surface where the rays of the late afternoon sun were penetrating in shhifting, silvery beams, heating the water almost to the temperature of a warm bath. Once of the surface we were picked up by the boat and, when everyone else was on board, we set off back towards Koh Lipe. The journey back was great, with the sun low in the sky behind us and the water around us remarkably calm, undulating only very slightly. From this glassy expanse, I noticed the fins and backs of some dolphins emerge, and after pointing them out to the others on the boat we watched the graceful creatures swim back and forth across our wake, their fins silhouetted in the distance by the sun.

By the time we pulled into Pattaya Beach the sun was setting with some lovely colours. With this backdrop we hopped back into a longtail, got into the beach, unloaded our stuff and then cleaned it at the dive shop. After saying goodbye to everyone I walked back along the beach, noticing on the way that one of our stripy towels was now hung on the balcony of one of the concrete bungalows next to our basic bamboo one. Since the day we'd arrived, Lucy had been desperate to move to one of the concrete bungalows, and it seemed today her wish had come true. When I climbed up the stairs she told me about her day, and the fact that she'd managed to acquire the bungalow and move all our stuff singlehandedly. She told me she'd spent the rest of the day relaxing, reading and swimming in the sea.

I was thoroughly famished after my day, so we both went down to the restaurant, passing the monkey tied up to a pillar and evidently sleeping against the lip of the tiled floor of the seating area. On Lucy's recommendation, I ordered some prawns fried with garlic, which she had had for lunch and some fried mixed vegetables, while she herself ordered some gnocchi and some garlic bread. Our accommodation was owned by an Italian and had lots of that cuisine on the menu, so we hoped it would be good.

My food soon arrived and was absolutely delicious, with 12 good-sized prawns in a peppery garlic coating. Unfortunately, I had finished all my food by the time Lucy's arrived, and when it did we were a little disappointed. She had opted to have gnocchi carbonara, but the carbonara was more like scrambled eggs with bits of ham in it, making the whole dish a little too dry. Overall though, it was a tasty meal and we returned upstairs, too tired to do anything else that evening.

I tried to read for a while on the balcony by the light of some candles but within minutes found myself falling asleep. Therefore I gave up and went to bed. One apparent advantage our new room had over the old one was a mosquito net over the bed, but this silver lining had its cloud, in the fact that it blocked much of the airflow from the ceiling fan. Therefore we found ourselves, after much sweaty tossing and turning, opening all the windows of the room and covering ourselves with damp scarves to keep cool. Through the course of the night the temperature did become more bearable, and we ended up having a decent sleep.

I was awoken by the bright sunshine just after 7am and found that the fan had stopped spinning, so it was probably a good time to get up. We only had power from around 6pm until the morning, as did most resorts on the island.

I got up, put on my sun cream and then went down to order some more bereakfast. We ate this on the balcony, having to shield ourselves with towels from the intense morning sun, and I caught up on some more of our blog. After heating up for over an hour, we decided it was time to go down to the beach and cool off in the sea.

I took my snorkel, mask and fins and we scrambled down to the beach and into the water. Lucy floated about and picked her way along the rocky coastline to the little beach around the corner while I cruised out to the nearby outcrops of coral. With the bright sunshine, everything was lit beautifully and I spent quite a while floating around above the coral formations watching all the fish going about their business. When we came out of the water we chucked our frisbee around for a bit until we dried off, then went back upstairs and showered off before resuming our places on the balcony.

At lunchtime we strolled along the beach and had a great lunch of papaya salad with seafood, spring rolls and a tuna melt with some fruit shakes, before wandering up the walking street to Pooh's Bar, where there was free wifi. We installed ourselves in some shady seats and ordered a beer, then sat for a couple of hours sheltering from the sun and catching up on news from the outside world.

Once we became restless, we walked back along to our bungalow, dumped our laptop and picked up some other stuff, then set off to explore some of the other parts of the island. We walked up a path between some of the bungalows set behind the beach, then followed a concrete track up a rise between houses belonging to the locals. On the other side of this rise we took a path down to a small beach where there was supposedly a bar and where we thought we might watch the sunset. The bar seemed to be closed and apart from a few tents erected along the back of the beach, the only other occupants of the beach were 3 monks.

We walked back up from the beach and along more concrete paths, this time past some buildings which seemed to be accommodation for the staff at one of the fancier resorts on our beach. In between the buildings were lots of unnatractive piles of rubble and litter. Once we passed this we cut down through some beach huts to Sunset Beach. This short beach, although it was steeper and grittier than our beach, had a nice outlook across a channel dotted with yachts to the larger nearby islands and of course with a view of the sun, which was by this time getting low in the sky.

We stopped at the Flower Power bakery on the beach in a shady seat and had a fruit shake and a brownie to share, looking out over the water between the leaves of tall ficus trees. Then we walked up to some rocks at the far end of the beach where I splashed around in the water and we watched the sun set behind some clouds gathered on the horizon.

We walked back along the beach, once again cutting up through the comically named Porn resort and back along the paths to our beach. On the way, the lighting was incredible thanks to the recently set sun. The clouds above us had turned the most fantastic colour, somewhere between pink and orange, and were reflecting this light back down to earth, bathing everything in a spectacular warm glow. When we reached our beach we once again entered the water at our end of the shore, and floated on our backs in the still waters under the warm, muted colours of the dusk.

With the light gone, we climbed up to our bungalow, showered, and relaxed for a while, before we noticed the wind picking up and a light rain beginning to fall. Just as the rain began, the whole beach was lit up by a phenomenally bright burst of lilac lightning. This was followed by an awesome rumble of thunder, louder than anything we had heard before and seemingly almost overhead. This display heralded the start of what would be the most spectacular thunderstorm we'd ever seen.

We sheltered inside our bungalow as the wind picked up and the rain began to lash down, Lucy peering out the window and me holding the door ajar against the wind and peeking my head 'round it. From here we watched as flash after flash of the supernatural lightning illuminated all around us in blinding bursts, each time closely followed by almighty cracks and rumbles of thunder. It was easy to believe the sky was actually being torn apart, the sounds was so incredible. The rain kept pouring down, and began forming rivers on the sand below us, even eroding the beach away in front of the concrete floor of the restaurant area of our resort as it poured off the floor in a waterfall. The show intensified to its climax when a single thick column, seemingly of pure energy, tore down out of the sky in a blinding streak to impact somewhere in the centre of the island. The impression left by this singular bolt hung in the air for a few seconds then faded away in a trail of sparkling motes just before the awesome peals of thunder backed it up.

Once the storm calmed down a bit, we armed ourselves with our umbrellas and made our way downstairs to see if the restaurant was still serving food. We had to jump over a chasm between the sand and the concrete floor of the seating area, then found out that only part of the menu was available, sadly not the Thai part which we wished to order from. We walked between some bungalows to the restaurant at the next resort along, where we had a tasty meal of spring rolls, tempura prawns, cabbage in oyster sauce and a bowl of tom ka coconut soup with chicken.

After our meal we went back to the bungalow and, quite tired after a long day, soon crashed out for the night.

The next morning we rose early again, after the fan turned off and the sun began to heat up the room. Although slightly overcast, it was a bright and pretty morning. We went down to the restaurant and had some breakfast, then took up our usual spots on the balcony to read and blog, with nothing better to do.

After heating up sufficiently in the sun, we went down for a swim and a snorkel again. Afterwards, we showered then decided it was time for some lunch so we lazily ordered some food to eat on the balcony which, like everything else we'd had from the restaurant at our place, was great. We had some coconut tom ka soup with prawns, spicy papaya salad and some fruit shakes.

We sat and read for longer on the balcony, then in the late afternoon took a wander down the beach. After failing to get cash out from one of the resorts because I didn't have my passport with me, we decided not to make our walk a wasted journey so bought some tickets for a boat and bus the next day to Krabi on the mainland, then took a seat on some cushions on the sand outside a bar to have some fruit juice and watch the sun set. We sat watching the comings and goings at the busy entrance to the walking street, and watched the sun crawl slowly down to the horizon.

After sunset, we wandered back to our place, picking up some mango and sticky rice to eat on the balcony, showered and changed then walk back down to walking street, this time successfully getting some cash at the resort. On walking street, Lucy left me at one of the numerous massage places and walked on to Pooh's bar with the laptop to use their free wifi.

I spent the next hour having a fantastic coconut oil massage, which was so relaxing I ended up in a heavy-lidded half sleeping stupor in which I wandered up to Pooh's to meet Lucy. At the bar we had some beers and toasted cashews and caught up on the news from the outside world. then around half 10 wandered back towards the beach. Along the way we stopped at a little bamboo-built restaurant and got some spring rolls and pad thai to share for a late dinner, fending off a pesky but cute cat who kept trying to eat our leftovers.

We walked back along the beach under a light rain, with purple and yellow lightning sporadically lighting up areas of the sky, but not in so dramatic a fashion as that of the night before. Back at the bungalow we read for a bit then crashed out.

In the morning we were up early as usual. We got packed up, took a shower then carried all our stuff down the cliffside stairs to the restaurant. We had a quick breakfast, paid the bill then walked to the resort down the beach where we were to catch the speedboat to the mainland. We checked in at the resort and were given little boarding cards, on which ours were numbers 59 and 60.

When the speedboat arrived that would take us to the mainland, I couldn't see how they could possibly fit 60 people in the covered seating area in the back of the boat. I was right, and we ended up being crammed in a rounded well up the front of the boat, exposed to the sun along with a few other unlucky passengers.

With fears we would be thrown from the boat and/or burnt to a crisp by the sun, we huddled down as the boat pulled away from the beach and fired up its engines for the journey to the mainland.