Ko Phi Phi - Not How Tony Remembered It

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Beep beep beep 05:15 in the morning! We had booked our 4 wheeled drive taxi to take us through the jungle to the pier for the 7am ferry to Don Sak, we checked in and were given our ferry tickets, our bus tickets and a green sticker each saying Phi Phi. We were crossing Thailand and heading to Koh Phi Phi. Three hours later we arrived at the mainland port of Don Sak, we were met by a chap stewarding us onto a bus - it was another venga bus! We boarded and the bus filled up, people sitting in the isle, bags rammed into the front of the bus, if the door opened we’d have lost our bags. Our bus tickets were collected and we were on our way to Surat Thani an hour later we were dropped off at a travel agent, the time was 12pm and on their sign on the wall the last bus left at 12 for the ferry, a bit confused we handed over our tickets and were given another sticker - this time a green one!

We spent the next hour and a half in this travel agent/restaurant eating sandwiches and watching the film Borat. Outside another venga bus arrived for us to board, this bus was full with half a dozen seats vacate, G and I having been on the road for months travelling on shitty buses have learnt to ensure that we are in the front of any queue and secured a seat, people were again lying in a line on the floor as the bus set off.

3 hours later we arrived at yet another travel agent/restaurant and were left here for 30 minutes or so, we then had to board a pick up and speeded to the pier, after 20 minutes of waiting here - thankfully not at another bloody travel agent, we boarded a speed boat bound for Koh Phi Phi, we had missed the ferry so to the company’s cost they used a speed boat, we finally arrived 12 hours after departing Koh Phanagn - the distance covered was about 250km.

For those of you who don’t know Koh Phi Phi it is located in the Andaman Sea on Thailand’s west coast. As you approach you pass by stunning limestone cliffs, multi-mixture of blues indicating the depth of the sea the spectrum displayed here: turquoise, light blue through to a beautiful deep blue. Koh Phi Phi looks very pretty it comprises of two postcard style arcs of white sand - Ao Ton Sai and Ao Loh Dalum. When you arrive you disembark at Ao Ton Sai, this has deeper water thus a dark shade of blue, and Ao Loh Dalum is shallower. Everything about Phi Phi is stunning what lets it down is the sheer number of tourists - the place is packed!

Phi Phi become known in the 1990’s when a book by Alex Garland called ‘The Beach’ was turned into a motion picture staring Leonardo Decaprio and was for the part filmed on Koh Phi Phi Leh, this is Koh Phi Phi Don’s uninhabited sister and is part of the local national park, however, what has stopped changes to its habitat from tourism and inconsiderate development is a far more lucrative business than tourism - Sea Swift nest harvesting! The farmers clamber notorious heights and defying deathly falls to harvest 2 of the 3 nests that the Sea Swift make, leaving one there for the chicks, these are sold for thousands upon thousands of dollars to the Chinese and to Singapore and turned into Bird’s Nest Soup, they are supposed to bring medical benefits, it’s beyond belief that a soup that is essentially made from twigs and bird spit is so expensive!

Koh Phi Phi again made the headlines on 26th December 2004 when it was hit by a tsunami, its 5 metre wave crashed over Ao Loh Dalum whilst a 3 metre wave hit Ao Ton Sai destroying the island from both beaches. Since then they have mapped evacuation routes and there is an early warning tsunami system in place.

Having been a visitor to Phi Phi both pre and now post tsunami I (T) was majorly disappointed with the way the development has been handled and been allowed to grow, Ao Loh Dalum used to be a nice beach lined with bungalows and a couple of chilled beach bars, it’s now the domain of high end resorts which stick out above the tree line and endless crass neon lighted dance bars lined with ugly white plastic chairs, now don’t get me wrong, I (T) like to throw a few shapes myself on the dance floor (not very well I hasten to add!), but that’ s where the out of control development has occurred, the town had its dance bars and on Ao Loh Dalum where cool beach bars were where you could kick back on mats with a reasonably priced beer and listen to some cool music, these have been replaced by top-end restaurants. The prices have shot up and now rival European destinations, we got a bungalow up in the hill, not near a beach and with no view for 700 baht per night, at today’s exchange prices is 15 pounds of the Queens English! Beachside venues were priced at anything from 2000 baht upwards most being around the 2500 bhat per night (that’s 50 quid!) These are cheap if you’re a 2/3 week holiday maker!

We went on a snorkelling trip around the various islands; we stopped at a place called shark point, but judging by the number of boats that go there on a daily basis I (T) can’t imagine that many sharks have visited there in last decade, however, there were loads of beautifully coloured fish, an amazing range of colours and cool coral too, and to be fair the snorkelling was good there!

Next stop was over to Phi Phi Leh, were we looked at the stunning cliffs, we made our way around to a cool little bay - cool until we saw the number of boats there, there must have been 30 or so and the bay is quiet small, we were reluctant to jump, primarily because we didn’t think there would be any fish and secondly due to the fear of being hit by a boat, a boats anchor or any other boat paraphernalia, however, I (T) jumped in and again there was cool fish and stunning coral, but it was too deep to get any good photographs.

Maya Bay was next and the famous ‘The Beach’ beach and as we turned into the bay my god, you couldn’t see any of the beach due to the sheer number of boats moored up on the sand, they were separated into speedboats and longtail boats, 10 or so speed boats to the left, a small swimming section cordoned off with rope and then a dozen or so longtail boats - to which our boat was to add to the numbers. Out in the bay itself were probably another 20 or so and a horrendously over packed speedboats and large vessel - you can see from the picture, why on god’s earth would you pay to be on that! We had an hour on the beach, we ate our cold fried rice lunch and took a walk around, G was mightily disappointed, all her friends who have been here have photos with it almost empty! I (T) on my last visit here it was empty and boats (from memory) couldn’t moor on the beach however, it was full of litter - today it appears they have swopped the litter for people and boats.

After lunch we set of for Monkey Beach, it was cool to see the monkey’s playing freely, also got to witness nature in action with a spot of monkey loving! The male monkey picked up the tail of the female and upon a quick inspection, decided it looked ok and then jumped on!!! Bamboo Island was next and was ok, full of tourists I (T) was kicking back enjoying a beer when low and behold the group of Europeans (couldn’t work out if they were Spanish or Italian) in front of us got there fun bags out and started moisturising!!!!!

On our way back we stopped at reef which we don’t know the name of but was bloody brilliant, the coral was stunning although you can still see the effects of the tsunami with a lot of dead coral laying about, the fish were colourful and we watched a shoal of fairly sizeable fish emerge from the coral, reminiscent to a fighting army setting off on a patrol! This in our opinion was the highlight of our whole trip to Koh Phi Phi.

We ended our time on Phi Phi on a high, literally, by walking up to the view point which is a 15 minute sweaty walk up far too many steps. The view is worth it but once again you can see the difference from before and after the Tsunami with the amount of development on the island (You can do this by getting a postcard of what it used to look like or by memory (we used T’s)).

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