First full day on Koh Lipe and the magic has begun! I was invited by new Australian friend Lee Fitzgerald to join Trash Hero in the effort of picking up trash on the beach... little did we know that meant a locally made wooden long tail boat ride to a private island with a special waterfall! The first photo is Sunset beach, just an hour before the locally made wooden long neck boat left Koh Lipe for the beautiful, uninhabited Koh Adang.

Trash Hero is funded by local Koh Lipe resorts to keep the beaches clean and safe for visitors. There are dozens of beautiful, empty, uninhabited beaches in this part of Southern Thailand and this volunteer effort, done every Monday morning, is a great way to circulate the cleaning of nearby islands. Volunteers are in for a day of adventure! A beautiful long neck boat transported us through the magnificent Strait of Malacca to the island where we cleaned the beach. On our boat there were three staff members: the captain, a guide and his assistant who hosted us for the hours of cleanup, watermelon on the beach, swimming at the deserted beach, then a complimentary lunch back on Koh Lipe served at one of the resorts. Bags and gloves were provided so we could race around the beach collecting everything the waves deposited or unconscious visitors left behind. Our merry little group included six of us, two from Germany who had done this the previous two Mondays, two from Canada, Lee from Australia and myself from Texas. It was a lovely way to give back and each of us certainly felt appreciated for our efforts by the generous heartfelt kindness we felt from the staff.

We were in for a surprise, as the early morning had been calm and sunny, yet soon after launching we encountered dark skies and lots of heavy rain which drenched us even under the roof top canopy.

We rocked through very rough water as everything was soaked while the thunder, lightening and swells were a bit unnerving and we worked our way to the large island of Adang, which seemed very far away under the rocky circumstances.

It poured with thunder and lightening all around us as we picked up trash on Adang Island. I had not brought my underwater camera and it was too wet to photograph our efforts with my iPhone, although Oh, the guide of this volunteer project, took a few wet photos with his GoPro after the storm calmed.

The amount of trash we picked up in an hour was many heavy bags which we loaded onto the boat and took back to Koh Lipe where a truck hauled the mess to hopefully be recycled.

It was such a fun adventure...I wish I were going to be here next Monday to do it again...