Ko Phi Phi

Ko Phi Phi Don is an island shaped like this in the center: )(  There is basically a mountain range on each side of the island, and in-between them is where all the hotels/bars are, in between the two bays.  The island is a walking-only island – no cars are allowed except for one or two garbage carts that roam around – otherwise, it’s only walking & biking.  This makes for a great culture by itself, but you really don’t need cars because you can walk from the north bay to the south bay in maybe 5 minutes.  It does make for some quite laborious work for the locals, since most goods are imported from Phuket and have to be wheeled in carts to their final destination.  Here’s one of the supply boats still being packed, on it’s way back to Phuket, I’m assuming.

The Phi Phi islands are made up mostly of stunning limestone cliffs – I ended up taking a few too many pictures of this, so here’s a representative one:

I ended up staying in a different hotel for each of my five nights, and had both good and bad experiences.  First night I arrived on Oct 11th at a place at the very end of the beach, met Mr. Song, the owner, and got an A/C room.  I then went out to explore the beach.  Here is the view from my first hotel:

I walked the whole beach to Sunset Bar at the end where I sat to have a drink and enjoy the view.  I met a few people there, one of which who was a local Thai man, Alec, who seemed to be working at the bar but also was having a drink, smoking and conversing with people.  Turns out he just is friends with all the people running the bar so he helps out since he goes there every night after work.  Anyways, we got to chatting, and he joined me to go look at the fire shows and dancing on the beach.  He took me around to all the different spots he knew – which I would have never found myself: Banana bar, live music bar, introduced me to the people at the tattoo shops he knew (still no tattoo though – don’t worry), and on to the beach party.  I was glad to have met him.  He was 42, so I knew he was all-right (mom) 🙂 Since he works every day at 8:00 am we parted ways towards midnight or 1 but he told me to meet him the next afternoon to go kayaking after he finished work.

The parties here seem almost better than the full-moon parties – probably because it’s a bit smaller and they play a bit better music.  At the most popular bar, “Slinky” there was a pole you could climb on top of – which a couple men seemed to think was a stripping pole, as they proceeded to take off all their clothes and went on to stuff their genitalia between their legs… must have been trying to imitate all the lady-boys.  A picture preceding that event:

After one night of partying, it was time to go sleep to get ready for the next night of partying – for my birthday. Getting back to my hotel was a task in itself, because high tide made it so you couldn’t walk on the beach home, so had to clamber over the bluff until the beach appeared again.  When I got back, it appeared that nothing was working in my hotel (no A/C, lights etc.).  After looking at the circuit breaker and trying to call to wake up the owner, I decided to try my best to sleep.  Turns out I had the key in backwards which activates all the power in the room.  Doh.  I should probably mention that this is something interesting that they have everywhere in Thailand hotels – the keys have a huge card attached to them that must be magnetic or RFID or something that when you enter the room, you slide it into the reader near the door and all the lights, A/C, power outlets etc. come back on.  The idea is that when you leave the room and take the key, all the electronics turn off the conserve electricity.  It’s a bummer if you’re trying to charge something while you’re gone though.

I probably deserved the cold I woke up with on my birthday, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me.  I checked out of that hotel, having the owner show embarrassed drunk me how the key works.  I then went on to use his kayak that he had offered me free use of for staying there, and paddled to monkey beach.  There were probably over 200 Chinese tourists there taking tours, with bright orange life jackets on – I found this quite amusing.  Still snapped a few photos of the monkeys and moved on.  They are actually quite practiced at opening bottles:

I went kayaking through a fun inlet and then headed back to find a new hotel.  I decided to stay at the new hotel that Alec worked at as an engineer/maintenance man.  It was twice the price, but still only $45 – it was my birthday present to myself.

After Alec was off work, he was excited to go kayaking before the sun went down.  I told him that I had gone earlier today and he told me not to worry, he’d paddle most the way :).  So I hopped in the kayak with my tour guide and we paddled to a remote beach with only one other guy from the UK there that had also kayaked there.

The rocks had lots of people that had stuffed white rocks with their own messages on them:

 

 

It was starting to get dark, rainy and windy as we paddled back, and man was that the longest trip back ever…

After a glorious warm shower we agreed to meet at the Sunset bar once again to celebrate my birthday with a bottle on Hong Thong – the local Thai whiskey.

I chatted with a couple from the UK who wished they lived in America.  Then my friends continued to pour fire shots for everyone that was at the bar – yum:

Then Alec and I headed down to the party madness on the beach, I spun poi for a bit and don’t remember much what else happened, but Alec got atop the pole and I somehow got a good pic of him with the moon:

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The next morning I moved to a new hotel and attempted to recover from the imminent hangover, while still battling my cold.  I was waiting for Alec to get off work so he could take me to the viewpoint.  He took me through the “scenic route” through the jungle, showing me all sorts of plants (cashew, mango) and stopping for a picture:

It wasn’t until the next day that I realized we were taking a shortcut through the jungle to avoid the 20 Baht fee for hiking to the viewpoint.  Thanks Alec!  The viewpoint was great!

The rest of the nights I spent at the Sunset Bar, not necessarily drinking.  I came to understand that most the locals are quite sick of the loud music until 3am and it’s the same show every night, same music etc.  So it was chill time.  I talked with Alec about the green lights out in the distance, towards Phuket:

Apparently they are fishing boats, with huge lights to attract the shrimp (or squid, I forget).  They go in pairs, and each boat drags one end of a net, pulling it up after the shrimp have swum into it.  In addition, on calm nights when the tide is relatively low, people wade out in the shallows on the beach with headlamps to attract & find the shrimp, and then catch them by net/hand.

The last day I decided to do a boat tour around all the surrounding islands.  Of course, some of the Sunset Bar folks also ran a tour agency, so they hooked me up.  It was a full day tour – we stopped at many beaches and also stopped in certain spots to snorkel.  Snorkeling was my favorite part, despite still having some plugged ears (it actually helped clear them up!)  The coolest thing I saw was right before I was getting back on the boat – apparently it is a squid, at about 3 or 4 feet long!

I took too many pictures on this boat trip, but there are some good ones, so go have a look!  Also, I tried to make the videos playable, hopefully that works for you now.

We went to a beach called Maya Bay, which is apparently where they filmed the movie “The Beach.”  I’d never seen it, but I was talking to some people from Portland, OR who said it wasn’t worth the watch anyways.  Apparently the movie is about some backpackers who found an undiscovered island/beach and live on it for a while.  Ironically, it’s now a super touristy place that everyone wants to see.

When we got to the last beach it was quite rough, and started to rain a bit.  Everyone was ready to go home after having to practically swim back to the boat from being so rough.

On the boat, I met a lovely mom (Liz) and daughter (Melissa) from Durban, South Africa.  I didn’t know they spoke English primarily there – I guess I’ll have to visit sometime.  Melissa was on holiday from teaching in Bangkok, and her mother decided to join her last minute. I’ve been hanging out / keeping in contact with Melissa – and our paths have crossed again since.  It was nice to laugh together about the “bros” at the front of our boat that were selfie-stick obsessed, with perfect hair for each countless photo they took of themselves.

The last night I went to spend at Sunset Bar with everyone, and got a group photo of everyone that was there at the moment, as well as Bailey (Bi-lay) the cutest puppy at only 45 days old.

I feel like I got a pretty good attachment to this island – even with the loud music every night until 3am, and being a bit more expensive than the mainland, it’s worth the atmosphere and beautiful scenery you get along with it.  I’ve been hoping to do some scuba diving, especially on the islands, but my sinuses have been clogged, so I’ve been waiting for that to clear up before I put them under too much pressure, literally.

The next morning I hopped on a ferry to the next island on my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants itinerary – Ko Lanta.  A much more chill island, with large beaches and a national park.  But more on that in the next post!

Sawadee Khap!

All the pictures are here!