While we enjoyed this vacation a lot, there were a few bumps and bruises along the way. The first day we were there, Mark stepped on a sharp rock in the water and cut his foot pretty good, one night on the way to the main strip to get dinner- Alex and Mark stopped to pet a stray cat and Alex tripped and fell hard on a stick, giving himself a nice bruise. The piece de resistance was me- I fell terrifically in the hotel.
The showers in the hotel had a hot water setting that was too high for Alex to reach, so he asked me to come in and turn it up for him so he could shower after a day at the beach. So of course, being the wonderful mom I am, I did. As I went into the shower, I fell- banging my ankle and cutting it, but worse, landing on the metal rail that meets the door to keep the water off the floor. It hurt and honestly I was a little worried I had broken something on the way down- so I was crying pretty hard and loud- which scared Alex and he was naked and crying in the shower and blaming himself that I had fallen. Mark had to come help me up from the floor, and then go down to the front desk to get help. I’m pretty sure that anyone staying the hotel that night heard me fall and then start wailing!
One of our new friends of the hotel staff (Ice) came up and had to check out my leg to see what the damage was, and she jumped into action. Ice pack was brought up, we were told we’d be moving into a lower room with less stairs to walk up and that someone would be coming to help move all of our stuff to the new room.
The hotel staff was absolutely amazing at handling this minor injury. They came and helped me move into a lower room, and almost as soon as I was settled on that bed with an ice pack, I was told that we were moving to a different room even lower.
This bruise is on the back of my thigh and took almost a month to go away completely- this was taken about 6 hours after the fall happened. It got as big as a large hand over the course of the next day or two. I had never had a bruise that had a lump in the middle of it, and it really did hurt to walk up and down stairs for a day or two, walking flat was mostly ok.
I said I would gladly take one for the team and fall on every trip to get this kind of an upgrade. We ended up in a beach front bungalow with about 6 stairs to get to the beach. It was very nice of them to help us out with everything, even making sure Alex was doing ok because he had been so upset.
So, that whole thing was a giant embarrassing fiasco- but we made it through it all. The next day I was supposed to join the boys diving, but honestly it hurt too much to walk all the way to the dive shop and then swimming- so I stayed home and rested while they went adventuring. After they got back, we decided to head to a restaurant that the dive shop folks recommended.
You can pick out your individual fish if you’re into that sort of thing, we let them pick because… I don’t really know what a good fish is.
Your fish is then cooked on the grill, or fried, or whatever way you’ve chosen.
This is the owner and chef of Nee Papaya, she moves so fast it’s hard to get a good non blurry picture of her. She was very nice to us, and really liked Alex. We picked a few items and couldn’t have been happier!
I don’t know what kind of fish these were, but they were tasty! Even though they were a little spicy (for Alex, we thought they were perfect) Alex ate a ton of each fish.
This was a lime fish, I’ve always had fish with lemon, but lime is a great change! Both types of fish were white fish, and very flaky and fresh- it really was a wonderful dinner after a hard day of diving and recovering.
The waitstaff of the restaurant are these friendly and happy ladies pictured above and below. They really got a kick out of the fact I was taking pictures of everything and hammed it up for the camera. They were very nice to Alex( but who isn’t) and made the meal even more special.
Alex went to thank the owner for a really delicious meal, and she stopped to take a nice picture with him. He also got a beautiful keychain with Nee Papaya on it as a souvenir.
One of the cool things about Koh Lipe, that we had noticed but really got to experience after the upgrade, is the abundance of hermit crabs running around. I had never seen a hermit crab not at a pet store before this trip.
I kind of got obsessed with finding the biggest hermit crab and spent the evenings following them around trying to get good pictures of them. Mark was a good sport, but I think Alex thought I had lost my mind.
Traveling Expat Family 