Five Boats Later and Five Hours Late

We booked a ferry from Krabi to Koh Lipe, it turned out to be a high speed boat. Which started out nice but pretty rough in the open water. There were about 10-15 passengers so plenty of room and somewhat comfortable bench seats. Not much splash so we stayed almost dry.

Our transfer was at Koh Lanta. The pier there is made of large tree branches and jets out of a shoreline building. While we were there, anywhere from 20 to 70 people were standing on the pier along with their luggage. It didn’t seem like that pier should have held up but it was actually pretty stable.

Our next boat was the same size with about five times as many people and their luggage. The thing to know about these ferries is that luggage isn’t limited most people had at least two bags and some have the extra large roller bags and duffles. Not sure how people maneuver these big bags as it’s challenging to handle our two each smallish bags.

The boat was super crowded and overweight, when we hit the open ocean the waves were so big and we were hitting the swells so hard the the impact was really rough, the water sprayed (saying it lightly) up and into the boat so we and everyone else were soaked. At one point I thought about getting out my snorkel mash to keep the salt water out of my eyes.

After about 15 minutes of the the captain turned around and headed back to the pier. Which was another 15 minutes of being soaking wet. I talked with another couple that had been on these ferries quite often, they said this was not normal, usually it is smooth like glass.

We had a 40 min wait for the next boat. This one showed up and was bigger. Yay! This ride was over rough seas too but it felt safer and was a little dryer. We were about 3 hours behind schedule when we got to the next pier in Koh Muk, there most of the people got off and about 15 of us continued.

Luggage is handled by the crew taking it all off at each stop, passengers picking up their luggage as they leave and then the crew reloading what is left. As people were trying to keep track of their bags the crew kept shoeing us back into the cabin so they could get out of port quickly, we later understood this was due to the low tide that was continuing to go down.

As they were backing away from the pier one of the three engines was taken out by something under the water that neared the surface as the tide lowered. It Nearly tore the engine right off. It took all of the crew and about five young guys from the boat to hoist the engine up with ropes. Then because of the damage we had to wait on another boat to come. This was another hour. We walked the LONG pier and found a place to buy a beer. It was a beautiful island and we were able to watch the sunset behind the mountains there. The sunset was amazing but not necessarily good as our next boat ride would be in the dark and these ferry boats are not really made to travel at night.

This ride was rough as the others, not quite as wet and pretty scary in the dark. We did get to see many fishing boats that had their platforms lit up with a green lights, it was too rough and too dark to take a good picture. The young gal behind us literally had a panic attack, thinking we were going too fast and going to die! Her terrified voice (even in German) didn’t help anybody else feel safe. I was doing pretty good until I saw the captain turn off the navigation devices so that the glare and light didn’t interfere with his line of sight into the darkness! Finally after about two hours we arrived at Koh Lipe which has a detached pier out in the Harbor, remember it’s still low tide. Here we had to transfer to long-tail boats amidst rough water, not OSHA approved ladders and with huge vertical steps from boat to dock necessary.

Finally, to the island to disembark unto a floating dock that again was pretty unstable and moving as we had to collect our luggage and get to the beach where we climbed a flight of stairs that each step was about knee high. All the while feeling so grateful to be there even if it was more boats then it should have been and quite a few hours later.