Day 91 - Sunday, April 22
The boat to Phi Phi left from Phuket town, so I had to take a minibus from Patong over to Phuket. Minibus/minivan is a cost-effective and easy method of private transfer from place to place in Thailand (and was included in this case with the boat transfer), though often it is not very comfortable as they try to squeeze in as many people as possible. I'd be wary about any minibus trips that were more than an hour or so. When we got to the boat, I was a little concerned because it appeared to be kind of falling apart and I had heard that one of the ferries sunk not too long ago while full of passengers, though no one died. A photo of the boat I snapped the next day:
On the way over, the sun had like a rainbow halo around it that looked pretty neat:
A few other pics of Phi Phi and Ton Sai Bay from the ride over:
People often refer to Ko Phi Phi as if it's a single Island but actually there are multiple Phi Phi islands, only one of which is inhabited - Ko Phi Phi Don. When I got there, I just kind of wandered around. Ao Lo Dalam is the main town/beach, where all the ferries go in and out of. It's quite small so it was prettty easy to see the whole town and check out the beach in just a short amount of time that afternoon. It's mainly just narrow alleys/streets lined with restaurants, hotels, bars and touristy shops, kind of like this:
The beach is quite nice except that at low tide there is almost no water in the bay, so it's just kind of mud. But when the tide is in it's quite nice:
There's one small hill that you can hike with good views of the island and sunset, so I headed up there for the sunset and snapped a few pics:
I had booked a boat tour of the islands for the next day that started pretty early, so I called it an early night, forgoing the party scene at the bars on the beach that I had heard could be pretty crazy (though not so crazy in the low season). I was pretty happy with that decision when I started pouring down rain; it was still coming down really hard hours after it started, when I went to sleep.
Day 92 - Monday, April 23
I would gladly pay $25,000 to never be bitten by another mosquito as long as I live, and I wouldn't even think twice about it. I really, really, REALLY hate mosquitoes, yet they seem to love me. I went to bed virtually covered in insect repellant, but I guess those f*ers managed to find all the patches of exposed skin where there wasn't insect repellant. I might even pay 50.
After doing some research the previous day, it seemed the options for a tour of the islands were either full day or half day (half day for those planning to party hard the night before) and either a big boat, speed boat or
long-tail boat . And then there are a couple of party/drinking boats among the half-day choices. The reviews for one of the party boats in particular were quite good (Captain Bobs), but it was like $75 for all you can drink and only a half day, whereas the standard full day tours on the long-tail boats and big/speed boats were like $13 or $20 respectively. But the tour lady said I could bring beer on the standard boats. It was hard to justify an extra $55 for all the cheap beer you can drink, when I could purchase beers and ice to supply myself with enough for the whole day for about $12. So that's exactly what I decided to do and opted for the big boat for the extra room, thinking a long tail boat might be kind of cramped.
I can't say I've ever had a bad day where I spent all day drinking on a boat, and Monday was no exception. I filled up my cool bag (a necessity on the Kiwi bus in NZ where sometimes we shopped for groceries several hours before arriving at a hostel, and I've kept it with me since) with ice and
Chang and headed for the pier. The first stop was snorkeling at shark point. It was pretty close to the bay and as a result, the water wasn't the clearest, so I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw a pretty big octopus and 2 full-size leopard sharks that were perfectly willing to swim right up next to me. Here's someone else's photo from the same dive spot:
Then off to Bounty island, where the water was much clearer and we kayaked over to the beach to chill out for a while.
We then cruised past Moskito Island, which based on the name, made me think I was happy we weren't heading ashore.
We passed some cool rock formations (photos below) on the way to Monkey Beach, our next stop,where there was a monkey at my feet right as I got my kayak onto the beach, and so I figured they were probably everywhere. But after a few seconds he jumped away and we saw no more monkeys on Monkey Beach. But the snorkeling nearby was pretty good, and at least we saw one monkey - better than no monkeys.
After Monkey Beach we headed over to Ko Phi Phi Le, which is the
next biggest of the Phi Phi islands and home to a couple oft-photographed bays that virtually every boat tour in the islands includes. At this point I was on about beer 7, and the couple of people I had chatted with on the boat were very jealous of my cooler of beer - I regretted not getting more beer so that I would have spare ones to share. At Phi Phi Le, we checked out Viking Cave:
Then did some kayaking and snorkeling in Pileh bay:
I think I might've gotten my camera a little wet because it wasn't exactly working very well after the kayaking trip. Next stop Maya Bay, perhaps the biggest attraction on the tour, and where they filmed some of the movie The Beach:
And then I got peer pressured into doing a backflip off the top level plank that we had been diving/jumping off at various points during the day. I don't really think the water was probably deep enough for such things, but after enough beer, peer pressure wins out over sense sometimes...
And then we hung out between the two islands to catch the sunset.
After a quick nap, I ended up meeting up with some of the folks from my trip at a place called Rolling Stoned. You haven't really lived until you've watched an all-thai rock cover band butcher 15 of the greatest rock 'n' roll hits from the last 40 years. To be fair, the guitarist was great and the lead singer's english was quite good, but still it was...quite a bit off. Afterwards, we headed out to the beach to check out some of the craziness at the beach bars. I was quite surprised at how many people were out because the island and beaches seemed pretty dead during the day. But the beach was filled with people partying/dancing all the way from the bar to the water line where the waves were crashing.
Day 93 - Tuesday, April 24
I felt like I had seen what there was to see on Phi Phi, and the hotel I was in was the most expensive yet worst of the places I'd stayed in Thailand to that point, so I decided to head back to Phuket. It was mid-late afternoon by the time I got back to Phuket, and I decided to just go back to the place in Patong I had stayed before because I really liked it, and figured that was just easiest until I figured out where I was heading next.
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