North Point Beach

North Point is where Koh Lipe finally goes quiet. While Pattaya Beach handles the ferries and the party and Sunrise Beach draws the sunbathers, the northern tip of the island keeps a small turquoise cove that most day trippers never reach. It goes by a few names, North Point, Karma or Bulow Beach, and its charm is simple. You walk to it, so it stays calm, and just off the point sits a reef and a sandbar that make it one of the better snorkeling corners on an island already famous for clear water. For a traveller chasing the Lipe of a decade ago, this is the closest you will get.

The honest notes keep it grounded. This is a compact cove with rocky patches, not an endless beach, so you pick your spot around the sand rather than sprawling anywhere. There are no hotels on the sand and barely any food, which is the price of the quiet, so come stocked with water and snorkel gear. Most of all, watch the tide. At low water a beautiful ribbon of sandbar reaches out toward Koh Adang and the snorkeling shines, while a high tide shrinks the beach and covers the best of it. Check the timing and you get the magic, ignore it and you get a rocky sliver.

For the food and culture wanderer, the trick on Koh Lipe is to treat North Point as the morning and the island's Walking Street as the evening. Spend the quiet early hours snorkeling the reef and lazing on the sandbar, then walk back down through Sunrise Beach and into the buzzing lane of Walking Street, where grills, fresh seafood, roti stalls and little bars pack the heart of the island. It is a rare place where genuine wild snorkeling and a proper street food dinner sit fifteen minutes apart on foot. My day is reef and sandbar at North Point, a swim back at Sunrise, then grilled fish and a mango sticky rice on Walking Street after dark.