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Published: July 19th 2009
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After a short ferry journey i walked along the pier of Phi Phi harbour and into the town with the people i had met on the way, two of the girls had booked a place in advance so i tagged along with them. I was not sure what Phi Phi was going to offer, on the one side it is refuted as being one of the most beautiful islands while on the other it is somewhere where everyone goes so i feared a heavily built up resort. Phi Phi was badly hit by the tsunami and as we wondered through the narrow streets i was pleasantly surprised, it felt like a small market down with a maze on one story buildings occupied by restaurants, bars and boutiques. although undoubtedly a tourist traveller hotspot the streets were reasonably quiet, with westerners quietly mulling around, and although not as quaint and Koh Tao it was a long way from the tacky beach front resort i feared. I checked in and went top the beach, a strip of golden sand which blends into green rocky mountains at either end which extend like arms around the emerald water forming a cove. Beautiful Thailand, i popped
All you can drink
depending on gender... in the water for a dip with the others i had met, the water was dirty and full of rubbish, beautiful thailand being wrecked by reckless westerners. That evening i went out for a few beers/buckets where Phi Phi revealed its self the quiet chilled bars gave way to raucous pubs with music pounding and an army of people on the streets forcing flyers into your hand with promises of free drinks and two for one offers, these special offers are lapped up by the hordes of westerners in their early twenties who want to party hard. We ended up in a bar playing drinking games, before heading to the beach where there were the usually fire jugglers accompanied by a flaming skipping rope, limbo and ring of fire. one after another people qued to jump and get burned by the skipping rope. I wondered what the Thai's made of this, strange people, the more of these westerners we burn the more they que up. All of this was encompassed by neon signs that they got rid off in blackpool 20 years ago.
The next Day i booked myself onto a island tour, the first being monkey island. The
monkeys live on a small strip of white sand set against a huge cliff face, there is a division of territory, the sand is for the monkeys and the shallows of the water is for the humans. We enter their territory at our own risk although we can venture out of the water with food for them. Next on for a snorkel and kiak around an enclosed lagoon before heading onto to Maya Bay, where the beach was filmed. The premise of the film being that its the most beautiful and secluded beach on the planet, me and a hundred or so other speedos trundle around the sand and dip in the sea in our congested isolation. We head out for dinner and a couple of beers, where i meet the cat who lives in a fridge. As we are eating i notice that on the bottom shelf of the fridge laying on some cardboard is a cat, at first im concerned, but then the staff dont seem to worried, and he looks like he has been there for a while. So either he holds the cat record for holding his breath or the fridge is not air tight. I
keep my eye on him and after a while he starts paw the door and meow, so i get up and let him out, he wonders around for a while, and then heads back to the fridge and signals that he wants to be let back in, so i ope the door and in he goes. fair play i think this cat has the only air conditioned room on the island they rest head off to the beach party, while i head home to have an early night, up early tomorrow for a dive. there is a party on the beach every night.
my dive was one on one with the dive master while there we also a couple of belgian lads who had not decided to go home early the night before, they partied till 5 got up at 7... ouch. We descended into the emerald water to be engulfed by rainbow coral and swarms of colourful fish. We had been down for about 15 minutes when the dive master turned around quickly and started frantically pointing i turned around to sea a Leopard shark swimming past us. It s the most beautiful thing i have ever seen,
longer than me and luminous yellow, its tail is not like a normal shark, is long and wispy, giving it a ghostly translucent appearance. absolutely stunning. Spend the next few nights partying on the beach, jumping through h oops of fire and drinking buckets of alcohol. i keep gettting trapped in a vicous circle of no longer wanting to be on the island with all its tacky beach parties, then attending said parties getting drunk and not getting up in time to leave.
on one such night we went to a party on the other side of the island, we were following some friends who knew the way back, unfortunately the following went a bit astray and turned into not following and then into going wrong direction. we walked along for a while, drunk and tiered, its about 5am, when we see some thai's sat around eating food, 'Hey where the white people live at', they laughed and pointed. i missed my bus that day, woke up with a hang over and still drunk booked myself onto another island tour that some friends were doing, it was only once we were on the boat that i realised that half the intinaryt was the same as the tour i had done the other day. the first stop was back to monkey to the monkeys although this time the guide said that we could o onto the beach, just dont run away from the monkey's, stand up be tall, and show them who is boss. i stayed in the shallows of the water, i have sen monkeys attack people before. people roamed the beach feeding the monkeys fruit, and always getting closer and closer, sticking camera's in their faces, letter the monkeys climb on them, two things struck me, first that the monkeys natural way of life had been destroyed by people constantly feeding them, second that there was no healthy fear of the monkeys. then a woman shrieked and ran backwards as a monkey took some fruit from her, the monkeys panicked and chased her, then another group hearing the commotion attacked one of the guys from our boat who had been sat on the beach surrounded by the monkeys, he got bit and later had to have a rabies jab.
then on to cliff jumping. diving of the boat in rock climbing shoes and swimming across to some rather grey jagged cliff faces which i had to haul myself out of the water on too, then climb up, stood at the top, looking down into what looked like grey murky water, very different to the usual lush green/blue, i think the colour reflected by confidence, i recalled the girl i had met in a bar the other night whos leg was in plaster because of one of these jumps, i thought to myself why do i keep doing these silly things, then jumped.
after that we headed back to the lagoon i had kiaked around several days before, bizarrely i appreciated its tree topped lime stone cliffs that sank down in the the blue water and the isolation they gave more when i was in a group then when i was on my own, weather this is because i was knackered from the kiaking or that the hang over gave me more time to appreciate it i dont know.
the next to stops were snorkeling with sharks i didnt go in, i didnt think that we would see and, we didnt, and then back to maya bay, as it was late we were the last people there, which was a massive improvement from the hoards that had been there before.
did eventually make it off the island formally known as the stunningly beautiful Phi Phi, two days late but no a day to soon.
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