Ko Phi Phi

We set out from Khao Sok alone except for one Englishman in our minibus which headed south from the national park towards to coast. Thailand has hundreds of islands off its south coast and given our tight schedule we had to limit ourselves to just the one so we put a lot of time into picking. Many months ago, on my return to Beijing from the Great Wall of China, I was recommended Ko Phi Phi from a couple who had stayed there earlier in their trip, and following further research we chose to go there. Our minibus trip was stress free, only stopping to pull in at one of Thailand’s 6000 branches of Seven-Eleven, and soon enough we arrived at what could only be loosely described as a bus terminal. However it offered us the chance to book our ferry tickets to the island as well as enjoy a sweet and sour chicken while we waited for our next bus to the port. In the two hours we waited everyone else left on their other various buses. This far from bothered us as part of the reason we had chosen Ko Phi Phi was that few people seem to head there compared to Phuket and Ko Samui. When our bus did arrive we headed off to the port to find a surprisingly organised terminal even giving us the chance to use a trolley for our backpacks for the first time since London. Given the state of my straps, currently relying largely on duct tape, I was rather glad.

The boat trip was fairly uneventful and soon we were docking in the island’s only town called Tonsai Village. Ko Phi Phi attracted us as it has no roads or cars and it small enough to get round on foot. It turns out this is not quite true as we stumbled across a road later on, but it is true for the village and you could easily stay for a week without seeing one. Our hotel, which we had booked from a handy information kiosk at the port on the mainland, arranged for someone to pick us up at the jetty however, given that there are no roads he arrived will a trolley as opposed to a car. We dumped the bags on the trolley and headed off. Tonsai Village at times seems more like a huge market given its tight lanes and number of stalls but when you get beyond the jetty it does space out a bit and you start to see the pristine beaches and mountainous scenery.

The outskirts of Tonsai Village beyond the incredibly clear water

We were staying at a hotel called The White 2 which unsurprisingly didn't stray from far from its name when it came to selecting its colour scheme. The room was very nice and spacious and even managed to make a concrete floor look good by insetting shells and marble flowers. The strange aspects of the room included semi-transparent bathroom walls and a very random bamboo ladder. When we arrive in any new hotel one of the earliest tasks is to check the TV channels to see if they have AXN as it seems to play few shows other than CSI, House and Hawaii 5-O which has already entertained us for many hours albeit when we should have been sightseeing. Unfortunately they didn't but did seem to think that guests may want to watch live CCTV footage of the harbour area. I watched a good hours worth later that night to see if anyone stole the bike the camera was aimed at. I was almost tempted to do it myself by the end.

One of few sights on the island was the viewpoint situated atop the highest point on the island which can be reached after a brief ten minute walk from the village. An hour later, following many map questioning sessions, we reached the peak thoroughly knackered having established that we had ignored the correct sign and instead followed one of the island’s only roads the long way round the mountain. The view was amazing but my celebratory Cornetto was even better. Having cooled down we could really appreciate the view and ended up staying an hour or so until sunset. Tonsai Village is built on reclaimed land between two smaller islands which now form Ko Phi Phi and the entire town was visible from the summit. Before heading down we stopped to look at a photo taken from the viewpoint just hours after the horrific tsunami in 2004 caused such damage to the island. The damage was terrible but allowed the village to rebuild into the great little place it is now. Within minutes we were back in town confirming we had missed the clearly signposted route at the start of our slog round the back of the mountain. Although, now I come to think about it when we set out from the hotel we only meant to walk to the beach, so how we ended up at the top of a mountain I'm not quite sure.

Linz overlooking the man-made section of land between the mountains containing Tonsai Village

That evening we set about exploring the lanes of the village and its many restaurants. Although we saw a few we could have stopped in they we going to be hard pushed to beat a £7 all you can eat BBQ buffet. Annoyingly Linz got about a pound off due to being a girl. I was almost tempted to go and buy a cheap dress, not to try and convince anyone I was a girl, but because they genuinely also offered a ladyboy discount. I decided against it though. Following a thoroughly filling BBQ we headed back to the hotel along the beach. Of course we had to walk past some market stalls and Linz could help but buy yet more bracelets.

Vegetarians could eat so cheaply as there was little more than a plate of cucumber squeezed
in amongst the meat

Unlike the rest of Asia, Ko Phi Phi likes to have a lie-in so shops don’t open until at least 10am and so our snorkelling trip the following day wasn’t due to start until then. Having left the hotel we opted for a quick sausages sandwich in a British cafe, with a bizarre Family Guy theme, before moving onto the meeting point. It appeared that no one else had booked onto our tour but rather than let us go on a private trip, which would have been amazing, we were asked to hang around and use the free internet on the off chance someone else showed up. It all seemed a little odd that come 11am we were part of a group of at least 30 others. Anyway, we headed to the jetty where everyone was handed snorkelling gear and fins. Given that they were being handed out one at a time and not a single person seemed to know their shoe size it was quite a while until we eventually set off.

We were split into two boats and headed out from the jetty through the islands unbelievably clear water. Having had some terrible rain in Khao Sok we were so relieved the sun had decided to remerge for our time on Phi Phi. The first snorkelling spot was a short trip in our longboat round the island where, having got in the water, it seemed the sea was even clearer than it had been before. Milling around the coral reefs was fun but it got even more entertaining when the crew started lobbing in chunks of pineapple. This caused a frenzy of activity around us and, although I'm not sure which part of my body resembles pineapple chunks, I did find I was getting the odd nibble from some of the fish. This caused a lot of panicking from Linz which is normally quite funny but given that her squeals were now being forced through a snorkel only made it more amusing.

This was our first snorkelling spot. Another longboat came to join us

Having managed to get back onto the longboat via its tiny ladder, which is made much harder in flippers, we headed off to a second spot where more of the same happened. The main difference being there was no pineapple left so Linz’s muffled squeaking was instead due to seeing various new fish. Following this we headed to a tiny circular island with a rainforest centre and a pristine sandy beach all the way around it. Although we pulled up here for lunch both of us decided we were too hot for a plastic takeaway container filled with rice and instead spent the hour in the sea. There was one slightly strange moment when I found myself throwing a live sea cucumber across the beach when it appeared to leak on me.

Annoyingly this was one of the only photos I took of our lunch island as it doesn't
do it justice

After lunch we headed back in the direction we had come from however we went beyond Tonsai Village in the direction of the largest island neighbouring Ko Phi Phi. This second island, called Ko Phi Phi Leh, took quite a while to get there and at first we were seriously questioning why we had made the trip. This was because our first stop was the Viking Cave which was talked up before the tour had started but appeared to be a tiny cave with little more than some old ropes and decaying wood. However, this island was about to get considerably better. Firstly we stopped at Monkey Beach which was, rather unsurprisingly, covered with monkeys. The highlights of this stop included being able to watch rock climbers high above the beach scaling the islands vertical facade, but even more so watching the chief monkey accept a bottle of coke from one of the guides and swig away. He did this with such ease I get the feeling he’s grown used to the arrival of our boats and will forever expect a free drink, although Linz remains convinced that he stole the bottle while the guide wasn’t looking. The highlight of the entire day however came next.

Taking a swig

We were taken just around the corner into the most incredible bay I had even seen. The water was a perfect turquoise colour and almost completely closed off from the ocean outside by almost vertical cliff faces and rainforest covered hills. We were allowed to swim around for around half an hour but frankly I could have for stayed days.

Again the photo doesn't do the place justice!

We were then taken further round the island to another bay where our boats moored themselves to other boats in the area, as there was no accessible land available, and we were told to swim over to a manmade staircase to reach the next spot. The spot was one of the most hyped up locations we would go to as it featured in Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Beach where it is supposed to have looked stunning. The manmade stair case appeared easy enough to handle however it wasn’t until we started to approach it that we realised it was actually at the mouth of a small cave and being battered with deceptively strong waves. To aid the people approaching the stairs a series of ropes had been fixed around it, similar to a very large spider’s web, however it soon became apparent that these were more of a hindrance as you had to time ducking under them with the waves or else you would be knocked back to where you started. Our first attempt resulted in Linz being pinned underwater and us retreating to the boat, however on take two, with Linz securely back on board, I made it on my own. Despite having seen smaller children manage it I still celebrated reaching the summit by turning to face the bay and overdramatically punching the air. After a five minute stroll through some rainforest, with no shoes and just my swimming shorts on, I arrived at Maya Beach. Despite taking two attempts and about twenty minutes to get there I decided it warranted nothing more than a photo to show Linz and about twenty seconds of my time. It was rammed. I haven’t seen the film, but something tells me when DiCaprio came across it he didn't have to first walk through a game of beach volleyball. I returned to explain to Linz it was not a beach worth drowning for and we entertained ourselves watching people fail on the stairs while coming back to the boats.

The sun was now beginning to set so we headed back towards the village, however the day was capped by being able to watch the sun set directly in between the two islands as we sailed past. I would love to be able to show you a photo but it seems in the decade or so since I last used an underwater camera I’ve forgotten just how truly terrible they are so the ones I did take came out horrifically. You may ask why we were using an underwater camera while on the safety of the boat? This was because the longboat offered almost no protection from the sea as every two seconds we would vault off a wave and splash directly into the next one, meaning that when we arrived back at Tonsai Village we were just as wet as when we were snorkelling earlier that morning.

That evening we headed to a restaurant called Paddy’s which enticed us in with its cheap drinks menu. Although we had earlier found out that we shouldn’t be drinking alcohol with our anti-malaria pills it didn't seem to have any effect and we were soon washing them down with cocktail buckets.

The following morning we spent lying on the beach and enjoying the few hours before anyone woke up. There was little to report from the beach other than a couple of Japanese girls who were a good source of entertainment. It seemed a standard photo of one of them in front of the sea was not sufficient so instead one would do a star jump while the other attempted to take the photo at the right moment. This lasted at least twenty minutes. At one point a passer-by offered to take a photo of both of them, but he hadn’t seen the star jump fiasco so had accidentally roped himself into a good five minutes of trying to photo two synchronised star jumps.

My view from the sun lounger

We enjoyed Ko Phi Phi so much that we were determined to stay as long as possible but had to leave as our Thai visa was dangerously close to expiring, so we consequently got the last boat off the island that day at 2pm. As a little farewell present from the island I got to enjoy a monkey walking around the jetty in full human clothing while I wandered off to get a drink. We had actually seen this monkey the night before when we genuinely though it was a child at first glance.

The boat was fairly unexciting although I did get excited at the sight of more luggage trolleys on our arrival on the mainland. We were loaded onto a bus outside the terminal which would take us the short distance on to the town of Krabi. We had to stop here for the night as there was only one trip to Langkawi, our first stop in Malaysia, per day and it left early in the morning. Once again there was little to report from the bus except I opted to exit via the window as getting down the aisle would have been too difficult due to the presence of dozens of backpacks. No one seemed to notice.

Our experience in Krabi was mainly spent failing to find anything as we could find neither our pre-booked hotel or anywhere to have dinner. For the first time we ditched our hotel plans, seeing as we hadn’t prepaid, and opted for the nearest and cheapest one called Hotel 7. Normal hotels would have put us in a numbered room, however this place put us in the Bubblegum room as opposed to the Cookies & Cream room or Very Cherry room. This may be the reason that we ended the night at a bizarre Taiwanese ice cream bar. Although it quite easily could have been down the strange addiction to ice cream we seem to be developing over this trip. I blame the heat.

The next morning we were up so early that we had to unlock the hotel doors ourselves before locking them again and masterfully lobbing the keys through a gap back onto the reception desk. We waited a short while for our minibus to arrive before getting on it to start our trip to the Malaysian Island of Langkawi. Nothing else to report except that I left by smaller bag on the pavement containing my wallet, phone, iPod, laptop, tickets and passport. The driver almost had a heart attack when I swore very loudly and jumped out the van a few hundred meters up the road.

We were on our way out of Thailand having been limited by our fifteen day tourist visa, although given how long we were already taking this was probably a necessity. We have done some incredible activities here, from riding elephants to playing with tigers, while seeing some amazing scenery and architecture meaning it has to go down as two of my life’s best weeks. However, despite it being the most popular tourist destination in South East Asia, it was no Vietnam or Cambodia.



Not so many photos for this blog, so enjoy this palm tree...



...and this cat