Who runs this site
My name is Bryan Roseman. I’ve been coming to Koh Lipe since 2014 and I co-own La Bombona Diving, a PADI 5-star dive shop on Pattaya Beach. I’ve logged more than three thousand dives in Tarutao National Marine Park, taught in five languages, and seen the island change across a dozen high seasons.
This guide is everything I’d tell a friend before they booked a trip — written in long-form, with the specifics that travel blogs tend to skip.
Why this exists
When I moved here, the English-language information about Koh Lipe was mostly either out of date or copy-pasted across a dozen near-identical blogs. The accurate stuff lived in WhatsApp groups, staff handover notes, and the heads of the people who actually lived here.
kohlipethailand.org is an attempt to get that knowledge onto the open web, structured properly, in the languages our visitors actually speak.
How it’s funded
The site costs about $60 a month to run (hosting, analytics, domain, translation tools). There are no ads, no sponsored placements, and no affiliate links on content pages.
Some pages link to La Bombona Diving, which is my own shop. That’s disclosed everywhere it appears. No other operator pays us for placement or coverage.
If you want to support the site directly, book a dive trip with La Bombona next time you’re on the island.
What we write about
The full table of contents is the top nav — every section there has the same voice: first-person, specific, honest about both the good and the rough edges. We’d rather tell you a place is mediocre and save you a bad night than pretend everything is five stars.
What we don’t write about
- Places we haven’t been to personally
- Businesses we haven’t interacted with directly
- Conditions we haven’t experienced at least twice
- Things that change faster than we can update them (flight prices, exchange rates — we point you to live sources instead)
Contact
Something wrong on a page? Missing a place worth writing about? Want to help translate?
Email bryan@kohlipethailand.org.
Credits
Design system: original, with some structural elements influenced by editorial magazine layouts. Photography: Bryan Roseman, La Bombona Diving archive, and credited contributors. Built with: Astro, Cloudflare Pages.