Snorkeling with clownfish at Koh Adang, Koh Lipe

Koh Adang is a much larger island that neighbours Koh Lipe to the North and can be seen from Sunrise Beach. When staying in a hostel on Koh Lipe I met two German friends and they mentioned that you can get a boat to Koh Adang and hike to a viewpoint that looks over Koh Lipe. We decided we’d leave one morning and hike to the viewpoint, then I’d snorkel off of the sandy Lam Son beach on the South easterly side of the island.

Koh Adang Snorkel Spot

Lam Son Beach is located on the Eastern side of the island, on the right-hand side of the map below. If you get a Longtail boat across from Sunrise Beach on Koh Lipe, it is a short 5-10 minute walk from the floating pier at the South of the island on the map below.

We set off at 10:30 am, the Sunrise Beach was a short walk from the hostel we were staying at, which was just off ‘Walking Street’. We reached a hut that was offering taxi transfers, which was opposite the small island off the beach of Koh Kra. We hired a longtail boat to take the three of us across to Koh Adang, which is a 10-15 minute boat journey. It cost ฿100 Thai Baht one way or ฿200 Thai Baht return, but you pay each driver ฿100 Baht on each journey.

Snorkel Spot

We arrived to the floating pier of Koh Adang and the backdrop was spectacular, it felt like we’d washed up at a deserted island, there were few people on the island. As we walked onto the island it was surprisingly tidy with an open walkway through the trees.

There were toilets, showers, and many tents within the trees where tourists were camping. There weren’t very good directions to the start of the hike, so we asked some people. It was a straight walk to the hike start point which started just past the toilet/shower block. We did the hike which you can read about in the post below:

Check out post below:

Once we returned from the hike to the starting point we made our way to the beach on the Eastern side of the island, which you can see through the trees from the hike starting point. The beach was very quiet with few tourists, there is a roped-out square for snorkeling which is at the end of the sandy beach. There was a little wave coming into the shore, but not too major at the start.

However this isn’t a sheltered bay, so the wave and current can pick up. Initially, the visibility was awful within the roped section, very cloudy and I couldn’t see much at all. I got out and then went to the right of the roped snorkel section which had much better visibility, here I saw small coral patches, grazing schools of fish, and a Clark’s Anemonefish, which would be territorial and swim out right to my face.

A snorkel trip turned up with about 10x people with life jackets. They went out to the roped section where the waves had calmed down. I followed the out, as I assumed they’d be experienced snorkeling here and would know the best spots. The visibility improved and the coral reef was spectacular, incredibly healthy, and colourful. The coral was mainly made up of Boulder coral, with Acroporidae, Brain coral, and Branch coral.

A dive boat arrived, but they were further out and didn’t enter the coral reef, it was quite shallow, 1 meter from you and the coral. I spotted a family of Ocellaris clownfish in between drifting Anemones, buried within the coral reef next to a Giant Clam.