The Beach and Sharks

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Hey everyone, how are you all?
Sorry its taken so long to update one of these things, but I'll try and catch upo on them soon.
So, after a very sad farewell to Phangan and some good friends we met, we finally managed to leave the Island...and head straight to the other side of the country to another one!
This time we headed to Koh Phi Phi, which is famous for being the amazing setting for The Beach, and also unfortunately for being one of the islands hit by the Tsunami.
When we arrived there we were recommended the US Guesthouse by a guy we met earlier on our trip, so we headed for there with a guy on his moped and effectively a little wheelbarrow strapped to the side of it, and he took us and all of our bags...needless to say the jourey wasn't our best to date.
When we started to look around the town a bit, literally the first people we saw were three girls who were our neighbours for a bit in Phangan, so after catching up with them for a bit they told us that Oran and Shai were still on the Island.
After briefly seeing them we arranged to meet the next evening, coz after a ridiculously long journey a solid days sleep was much needed, and we did almost manage a day!
The next day we were all properly rested and ready to go, at about 2pm, so we headed down to the beach before being ready to go. Ironically, despite a nearby beach being the setting for The Beach, this beach actally wasn't very nice, so we spent most of our time in the sea attempting to play with a roughly 20p frisbee...it didn't work.
so in the evening we were all ready to go out, but what none of ther bars told anyone on the Island was that they ALL weren't gonna open tonight because it was the day the election.
It did work out quite well though because we were able to book a boat around the two Phi Phi Islands for the next day, and with ther early start a piss-up the night before was probably not the best plan.
So, this boat trip, which cost rougly 3 pounds, was just unbelievable!
Our first stop was Maya Bay on the smaller of the two Phi Phi Islands which is completely uninhabited because its a national park. Maya Bay was the place where the filming for The Beach was done, and it was unbelievable! Its a huge bay and its almost completely enclosed by cliffs from all sides, so from some angles it looks completely cut off from the sea. After a few more stops for snorkelling, photos and jumping from tall things, we went to Monkey Bay, which is a little beach which is just crammed full of little monkeys, which was all fun and games until one of them decided to start going through my bag! To get to the beach you had to take a small kayak from the bigger boat, and by the time me and bish had got all the stuff we needed, we'd been to the beach and back 3 times.
The next stop off was a place called Bamboo Island, which is a tiny Island miles from anywhere else and is just stunning. Its basically just a perfect Fijian Island dropped off the coast of Thailand.
Everyone on the boat thought that this was to be our last place we went to, but it turned out we went were going to another place aswell. When we stopped it was a totally innocuous(?) looking place with seemingly nothing there, but then the captain told us that we were more or less guaranteed to see harmless black-tip reef sharks down there, so we all got in the water as fast as was humanly possible. In the end we saw two of the sharks, and they were just the most incredible looking animals. I think they were about 4ft, but i can't really remember beacuse it was so long ago.
When we got back to the Island we were finally able to go out, and we arranged to mmet everyone in The Reggae Bar in the centre of town. This was a pretty cool bar that everyone starts the night at, but the fact that it had a thai Boxing ring in the middle made it the best bar I could imagine. Anyone who wanted could go up and fight, and the first fight was pretty boring because the two guys were a couple of pussies, but the second fight was awesome beacuse it was two hammered mates and they were just going for eachother!
But after that two professional thai boxers got in the ring, and after a ten minute pre fight praying ritual, they beat the absolute shit out of eachother!
After that we headed to another bar on the beach, and they along with the reggae bar sold buckets, and seeing as this was the last time we were gonna be able to have them, we didn't have a small amount of them...and thats where most of my recollection for that night ends, so I'll leave it there.
Phi Phi was definitly a place I loved visiting, not only was the scenery incredible, but to see how badly affected the place was by the tsunami, and how well its recovering in most places really was great to see.
We were also able to catch up with some old friends againd which was great, especially Oran and Shai as we all got quite close to them.
And after Phi Phi it was bye bye to Thailand and hello Malaysia!

Hope everyones doing really well, and i miss you all, and I'll try to keep more up to date with these things.

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Comments

[Mum]

Sharks and boxing
Your fingers must be aching Will, 3 blogs in a row. Boxing sounds hilarious I so wish I could have been there. Did I read you all jumped in when you heard about the sharks,I'd have climbed up the mast as quick as poss. Great to hear all the news. Love mum xxx