Ko Lipe is a tiny island in the Adang archipeligo, down in the deep south of Thailand. We are particularly glad to be here, as it is well off the beaten track and still relatively unspoilt by tourism. We have found the best beach yet, soft white sand and emerald green water. The swimming is excellent as you are neck deep in water within a few metres of the shore, unlike the other beaches we have encountered where you have to wade out quite far before attaining enough depth to swim properly. The water is really clear and the sea life exceptional, making for great snorkeling close to the beach.

The pace of life here is slow, even by Thai standards. There are a number of good restaurants serving fantastic seafood, cooked simply and with a Malayan influence.

We found ourselves an excellent place to stay called the Mountain Resort which is set back on a rocky hillside above a picture perfect spit of sand. There is a half kilometre channel seperating our beach from the dramatic Adang island opposite. We have the nicest view from our bungalow, down over the beach and across to the forrested mountain that is Adang. We can't imagine it gets much better than this.

We met a great couple on Lanta just before we left. They had come into the same travel agent as us to book the same ferry crossing to Lipe. They were Lee and Astrid. They are virtually the same age as us so we got on like a house on fire! We spent all our time on Lipe in their company. Lee had just left his job running a gastro pub in London called the Raven and Astrid was a restaurant reviewer from Norway, so they knew a thing or two about good food.

We have just been spending our days on the beach and our evenings eating and drinking. We took a boat out to the protected marine park on the surrounding islands and did some really cool snorkelling. There were amazingly coloured corals and fish. We saw clown fish (like Nemo), stone fish and even a seahorse! My marine knowledge is basic, suffice to say there were fish in all colours imaginable! Unfortunately we had picked a day when the sea was quite choppy and it started to rain heavily on the way back. It was a comical scene on the returning boat. The spray was like having buckets of water thrown into your face. There would barely be time to wipe the salt water from your eyes before the next bucket load hit! We started laughing and then of course the water was going into our mouths too! It was the first day of bad weather on the whole trip so far. We have been so lucky!

We had only planned to stay for three nights but soon extended that to six. That was when we started to encounter some problems. Our next port of call is Langkawi in Malaysia. We booked our ferry crossing only to find it delayed by four hours. This would've meant a late night arrival in a new country. We didn't fancy that much so we upgraded to the afternoon speedboat the following day. It's a good thing too as the ferry was later cancelled altogether!

This is where we had a real problem. We were about to board the speedboat when a Thai immigration official told Stephen he had overstayed his visa and couldn't leave. The problem was that his passport had been incorrectly stamped on his return from Cambodia. We had bought double entry visas before we left England which allowed a 60 day stay for each entry. Bangkok immigration had missed this and only stamped for the normal 30 day stay allowed to British visitors. This was an error that the immigration official had made. It became Stephens error when he failed to notice the mistake. Consequently we were unaware that the visa had expired on the 16th January and the beaurocratic immigration department had to now be appeased!

We had to spend a second extra night on Lipe and wait for the passport offices to open again the following day. Then there was a fine to be paid. 500 baht per day for a 4 day overstay. It could've been so much worse. Had we not tried to leave for Malaysia, we would've been unaware of the overstay until our return flights to England on 13th February. This would've meant a fine of 500baht per day for an overstay of 28 days!

In the end it was all sorted the following day, fine paid and passports stamped. We took that afternoons speedboat and finally left Lipe on the third attempt! It was no real hardship to spend all that extra time on Lipe and would return without hesitation as it is the closest we've come to paradise so far!