Christmas on Koh Lipe

After another plane, a bus, a minivan, and a speed boat (that broke down twice en-route) we finally make it to Koh Lipe island hot, sweaty, and exhausted. It will be nice to stay put for 5 days. Our little cabana has amazing views, and thank god it has AC. I know I came to escape winter, but 90 degrees with matching humidity is a bit much. We spent Christmas Eve on a beach clean up mission with 60+ other folks. We took 6 long tail boats to a beach on an uninhabited island, spent a few hours collecting trash, and swimming, and got a free lunch afterwards. It was awesome, THIS is the kind of ecotourism that needs to take off globally as soon as possible! But it does make you a little sad too, this is not the solution. What are we as humans doing! Everything we make needs to be engineered from the beginning to have a long useful life, that in the end is easily recyclable, or biodegradable. Single use plastics must be banned, and this has to be implemented in society in a way that makes it easy and natural to comply. We spent the evening at a concert of the famous Job 2 Do, Reggae singer (he’s like the Bob Marley of SE Asia) and his band. It was super fun!