White sand beaches, crystalline water, good snorkeling and a fun coasteering route in the Southernmost islands in Thailand.

  • Beauty/fun: 8/10 for the coasteering. Nice rocks that reminded us HK’s but with more lines. Crystalline water with tons of life in. Several white sand beaches enroute.
  • Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 6/10. The West Southern coastline is really simple to scramble on. We only needed to swim once to avoid a high cliff climb. The Northern shoreline is a bit more technical. She basically swam it all enjoying the snorkeling. I jumped into the water and back to scramble on the rocks several times.
  • The map

And the Garmin tracks of the long and short routes (+ some walking on the beach and back…)

There is no airport in this tiny island. Ferries arriving from different destinations. The closest is Langkawi, which has connecting flights from Hong Kong with Air Asia and other airlines.

We went there in early December, just before the peak season started. The usual fun in Koh Lipe includes scuba diving, snorkeling, island hopping and chilling out on its beaches and tons of bars and restaurants (mainly on its Walking street and beaches).

It was very windy those days and therefore we were not able to go to the best diving spot: Stonehenge. Nevertheless, we had some decent dives. We saw mainly small stuff (all kinds of nudibranches, squids, nemos, etc) + a turtle on our way out. We dived with DJL Diving. A nice crew of mostly Argentinians. A video from another shop that can give you an idea of what you would see. Nothing spectacular like in Raja Ampat or other places where we have been before.

There are a lot of shops (and hotels) selling similar snorkeling trips to the adjacent islands + you have the possibility of hiring a private boat. We did the plan B. OKla. Do not forget to bring your Nature Park entry ticket with you.

The main coasteering route (red line) is very straightforward. Get to the end of the beach around DJL and start scrambling on the rocks. In low tide, as already mentioned, the initial part is easy. You will encounter several white-sand beaches (although they might have plastic trash brought by the waves). And, in our case, even monkeys coasteering around.

Beware of old nets left behind. We didn’t have any problem with them but I missed the security of having my mesh cutter, just in case. There are a lot of urchins too, so be careful when coming out of the water. Once you turn and start heading east scrambling becomes more technical. Several higher cliffs, horizontal bouldering interesting problems. At least one set rope, guess used by fishermen. Summer decided to swim almost all these 1.5 km, as it was a bit too hot for her + beautiful snorkeling area. She even saw a coral snake. Endpoint westernmost sunset beach, around Pitiusas Beach resort.

On the map, it looked that there was another short route possible. Easternmost area (blue line) is “trickier” though… The small peninsula includes a military base, or that is what we understood from soldiers there, who did not want to allow us to continue our “hiking”. Somewhere around here.

We asked them if we could snorkel and swim around. Surprised, seeing our full gear, including my backpack, they agreed. So we mainly swim around and climb to rocks to  take some pics in the initial section.

We found several snorkeling groups brought by boats enjoying the clear water in this area, also surprised and cheering us on our “adventure”.

There are nice looking rocks. Couple of tiny isolated beaches (the biggest one with quite some plastics).

In the second half we coasteered more on the rocks, as we could see some fishermen set nets and did not look too safe to do it without the knife. Just in case.

Ending up at Sunrise beach.

Additionally I swam all the perimeter of island. Most interesting areas were the ones coasteered. The nicest beach “laying-down-I-want-to-relax” was around Andaman resort towards Mountain resort. The North beach(es) had the coral areas very close to the shore, but they did not look healthy. Quite some broken areas. Mostly brownish and some bleached. But there was still tons of life (small fishes etc) around.

If the sea conditions would be better and you are able to explain to a long boat captain what kind fun you are looking for, we saw beautiful rock formation islands while island hopping. Plan B around Ko Hin Sorn and Ko Batong.

They would be nice to coasteer instead of a not especially interesting snorkeling.

You can kayak around. Go up to the look outs and a bit of outpaths in Ko Adang. And a lot more. Enjoy!

Everything you should know before coasteering

More adventures abroad.