Phi Phi

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Phi Phi, (pronounced P P) is by far the most naturally stunning place we have been to so far. From cliffs, to clear ocean, to beautiful sunsets, it has provided me with some fantastic photo opportunities and memories to bank. Phi Phi has two islands, Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh, Phi Phi Don being the one that we stayed on. We arrived to the views of beautiful cliffs, high up vegetation, white beaches and deep blue, clear water. Our ferry from Phuket was a pleasant ride (thanks to the travel sickness pills we had taken) and as soon as we walked on land, a lady was there to take us to her stall to show us the accommodation that was on offer. As it turns out, we didn’t end up using her company but instead I sat at a beach bar with the bags while Matt trawled the local guesthouses. Isn’t he good? It came with a high price though, leaving him to choose accommodation. He found us a room up a hillside in a place called Uphill cottage - very uphill but not very cottagey, more dingy and sticky. Everything on the island is much more expensive than the rest of Thailand that we have visited and we ended up paying over double the price of some of the guesthouses we have previously stayed in - 800baht (£16) a night. There were ants climbing up the walls and a new variety of ant that I haven’t seen before, crawling over the bed. Oh and a leaking toilet which caused the bathroom to be constantly under about half a cm of water. Nice. Cold showers seem the norm here but it’s not a bad thing as it is so incredibly hot! And there isn’t a chance in hell that we would be able to pay the price for air conditioning so we had to cope with a fan room.

Phi Phi has no roads, just small alleys running between different places. It has strips of clothes shops, many bamboo tattoo studios (that we have managed to resist), bars and restaurants and pancake/fruit shake stalls. It is really lovely and has a great atmosphere about it, yet unfortunately, it often smells of sewage! Stinky Phi Phi! As Phi Phi has no roads, the only transport they can use are ferries, bicycles, and trolleys/trailers that they push around with things in like crates of alcohol, rubbish etc. The natives spend their time riding around the alleys on their bicycles and instead of hearing loud toneless horns (definitely a nice break from motorbikes and cars) they generally called out ‘beep beep’ or made some other noise with their voices to announce they were behind you trying to get past. It was very funny.

We spent our first day on the beach at Loh Dalam bay, one side of the island, then climbed up the hill to the viewpoint to see the sun set. Beautiful. It is pretty cool that it is possible to walk from one side of the island to the other (from a beach- Tonsai - to the beach Loh Dalam) in about five minutes, thus from high up you can see the bays, back to back, practically meeting - see the picture to see what I mean.

Hello strangers, you may have noticed that the writing quality of the last few blogs has been a substantial improvement on the previous tomes (I very much doubt that)due to Cate doing the majority of the leg-work while I was busy feeling a little blogged-out. But I’m back now, so I’m afraid you’ll have to have to put up with my incoherent take on our adventures again. Whereas Matt decided to give up with blogs upon feeling ‘blogged out’ as he put it, I thought that taking time out to write the blogs despite having this feeling was well worth it as I think it will be really lovely to read in years to come when we are old and (more) grey and want to reminisce about the things we got up to on our worldly adventure. So many things happen that it is very easy to just not log them in your memory which means that unless we record them, they may be lost forever. Anyway...

As Cate said, Phi Phi really is postcard picture perfect with long white sandy beaches, palm trees, and bright blue seas. It’s just a shame it’s so bloody expensive (compared to everywhere else we’ve been in Thailand that is). After the initial mishap with my accommodation choice having ants and cold water, don’t forget the leaking toilet we moved the next morning to a newer place that was closer to the beach and 200 baht cheaper, bonus. So if anyone’s interested in decent cheap rooms in Phi Phi then give Oasis Guesthouse a whirl, bit of a bargain at 600 baht, shared bathroom.

Before we go too much into our second day which we spent on the beautiful Long Beach (not actually that long) I’ve got an admission to make, something that I’m not proud of and that I’m pretty sure my friends will rib me about for the foreseeable future. **In the alcoholics anonymous style-e** ... My name’s Matt Goddard, and I bought a vest. There, I’ve said it. It’s a path I never thought I’d take, but sometimes the ends justify the means, and it’s so bloody hot here! Needless to say I now wish I’d spent 20 more hours a week in the gym as a blindingly pale, out-of-shape man in a vest (or singlet as the shops insist on calling it) is not a pretty sight - only exacerbated by my current “t-shirt sunburn” making the vest look even more silly. What Matt isn’t admitting to and I’m sure that some of the Stannington View guys and girls will remember, is that he has indeed bought two vests before, a good few years ago, from Topman. So this is most certainly not his first ‘vest’ experience.

Anyway, confessions over, back to the fun.

As Lon Dalam bay was fairly busy, we thought we’d seek a bit of solitude so we took the expensive longtail boat taxi to the beach around the coast. Long Beach is a much more chilled out and quiet beach than our local one, mainly because it is backed on to by a scattering of posh looking resorts and therefore there are less backpackers striding around with their suntans and Frisbees, but a quick trip on the longtail boat and anyone can enjoy the peace and quiet. We’d bought some snorkelling gear on our way to the boat, so spent the best part of the afternoon exploring under the sea (I can’t say the phrase “under the sea” without the words resonating in a bad Jamaican accent, Sebastian the crab style). There were so many cool little fishes under the water including seeing our first Clown Fish (Nemo!), among many other little characters who seemed as interested in us as we were in them. Between flapping around in the crystal clear blue waters and relaxing at the beach-bar it was a pretty decent way to spend an afternoon, but before we knew it the sun was starting to go down and it was time to hop on a boat home, another hard days travelling done. I really don’t know how we manage sometimes.

Phi Phi is rather special because it offers places of solitude like this but also provides people with places to let their hair down and drink til they are very sick. By night the small shambles type alleys become busy with bar staff flyering, trying to get people into their bars by tempting them with happy hours and free drinks. On our first night in Phi Phi, we wandered around and found a restaurant called Cosmic that looked incredibly busy and was recommended by the people sitting at the tables by the menu. As it happens, this place was recommended to us by pretty much every person who suggested places for us to eat so it may just be that they were busy because of this. The food was ok anyway, so with our bellies full, we looked for somewhere to have drinkies. We found a Reggae bar that had a boxing ring in it so set up camp there. I had a mojito - possibly without any alcohol in it - and Matt went straight in for the cheap buckets which made him a little drunk. We watched two random holiday-makers trying to beat each other up in the ring (for the reward of free alcohol), a huge price to pay if you ask me. They were really hammering each other and it made me feel quite uncomfortable that people take pleasure in watching and doing this kind of thing, especially when there was absolutely no skill displayed. They are crazy.

I thought it might be nice to walk along the beach in the dark so we headed that way, picking up flyers as we went. They were offering all sorts of things, cheap drinks, body paint, bamboo tattoos, free buckets. Matt’s eye was caught on the words ‘Free buckets’ so that particular flyer was stored safely in his pocket for later. For those of you who are not familiar with the term ‘buckets’, we are basically talking about buckets (like ones you would make sandcastles with), with a lot of strong alcohol and some sort of mixer in them. Oh and lots of straws. Remember when we were in Pai in Northern Thailand? They were what gave me a two day hangover and put me off alcohol for a long time. The buckets in Phi Phi were pretty awesome, only 100 baht in Reggae Bar and FREE at the beach bar, and they were only 180 baht on the street (for a 375ml bottle of Thai whiskey, one can of coke and one bottle of Red Bull), cheap and potent - brilliant!

Anyway, before we got our free buckets we spent some time at a beach-bar called Apache watching some crazy fire show antics; which started with a skipping rope being set on fire and people being encouraged to have a go skipping through it for a while for a free shot ... of course the buckets that people had been drinking all night gave a lot of people the Dutch-courage to go and try it. I however excused myself from proceedings; I don’t do skipping on Fridays. The skipping was soon replaced with a limbo competition, with one distinct difference from your normal limbo competition; the limbo bar was on fire (are you sensing a theme yet). The Thai guys who were running this were AMAZING at it, and two or three of them managed to get under the lowest height (which couldn’t have been more than 30cm off the ground). After some mass-participation in a game of “jumping through a burning hoop” the Thai guys started their own show of spinning staffs that were set on fire, to a constant sound track of Linkin Park, Papa Roach, etc to spur them on. One guy span it so quickly that he’d often accidentally put out the fire from spinning it too quickly, he was awesome at it. That said, they weren’t all stunning at it and a lot of time that the staffs were thrown up in the air “baton-style” they were dropped when they returned to earth. One particularly funny/worrying occasion led to one of the guys completely mis-judging his thrown, and instead of throwing the flame ridden wooden staff up into the air he threw it directly into the crowd ... whoops.

We drank our free buckets sat on the beach, listening the sea lapping near our feet as the tide slowly started to come back in, and looking up at the stars vainly trying to make sense of what the famous constellations were. This romantic setting was only interrupted by two things; the fact that I was much more drunk than Cate so doubtless becoming a liability/annoyance; and by the fact that people had clearly decided that the toilet was too far to walk to, and before we knew it the sea had become an unofficial urinal, with rows of blokes lining up to take a shot a weeing on the fishes. Nice. At that point we left. Also, the music had got a bit too loud for Cate, proclaiming it was like being in Ibiza, I think that was when we realised that we should probably not bother busting a gut to get to a Full Moon Party. Yeah I was quite disgusted with the antics of the dirty men. What a way to spoil a beautiful setting.

The following morning we booked ourselves onto an afternoon trip on a longtail boat. It was really good to meet new people, although two of them didn’t even attempt to smile at us, and the other two men who we had deep and meaningful conversations with (about the global CEC Sarah) didn’t even bother to wait for us to get off the boat at the end of the trip to say goodbye. Charming.

The trip was absolutely brilliant. Our first stop was just around the corner from where we set off (around some very high cliffs) at a place called Monkey Beach. The sand was pure white, like the sand dunes in Mui Ne, Vietnam, and was unbelievably soft between our toes. There was a treeline backdrop where monkeys were being tempted by people holding out fruit for them to take. The little ones were quite shy, hanging from branches, moving cautiously towards the glaring tourists and then retreating quickly. It was cool seeing these monkeys and made me realise again just what a unique experience we had when we were in Lopburi at the beginning of our trip, spending hours being surrounded by them. It was a short stop at Monkey Beach, then we went on to a lagoon to snorkel. The masks the company provided were so much better than the ones that we bought (not letting any water in) and after taking a leap of faith and jumping off the edge of the boat into the warm, turquoise water, we set about exploring the marine life. This was cool but NOTHING we have seen has topped a place that we stopped later, outside Maya Bay, for the marine life that was visible to us. The water was completely clear, the visibility was great, fish were all around us, swimming with us. I was pretty excited when I saw an angel fish emerge from a rock, looking elegant and prim. It was so beautiful. There were all sorts of fish swimming about everywhere we looked.
Both Matt and I have read a book called ‘The Beach’ on our travels and as Maya Bay on Phi Phi Ley is the main setting for the film that was produced about 10 years ago, it is now a huge tourist attraction. It is a small beach with luscious green vegetation as a backdrop. We went in search of the toilets (in bare feet Laura, although there were no ants around to bite us thank goodness), and it took us along windy pathways that I would have liked to spend longer exploring. The water was clear and warm and once we had relaxed for a while, I took my mask and snorkel out into the ocean and captured sight of some quite big fish (about a foot in length). What an amazing amazing amazing afternoon.

To be completely honest I was a little disappointed by Maya Bay, I don’t know what I was expecting really but I suppose it’s turned into more of a tourist attraction rather than a pretty beach to relax on for a while, with boat load after boat load being ferried on and off the beach in pretty quick succession ... it also probably didn’t help that the sun had started to go down by the time we arrived, so it wasn’t bright and sunny. Having now read the book The Beach I also don’t really understand why they chose Maya Bay as it’s not really like the beach they describe in the book. I agree that is looks nothing like what they describe in the book, but I really don’t understand it when people say things like they are disappointed with it as it is now a tourist attraction and has lots of boats ferrying tourists in. If it wasn’t for it being a tourist attraction (and for a longtail boat like ours ferrying us in) then we would never get to see places like this. No we weren’t isolated there but it was beautiful. There weren’t that many people there. We are on the tourist trail. There are bound to be tourists there. Why should we be there but no-one else be there? Rant over.

Once we’d used up our allotted 30 minutes on Maya Bay we were off again to a couple of other little caves/bays to have a little look around before making the boat journey home as the sun was setting, lovely jubbly (all Asian people think that British people use this phrase all the time).

Cate foolishly let me decide upon our dinner destination that night, and we ended up spending relatively silly amounts of money on a relatively not-nice Mexican meal ... when will we learn, if it’s not pizza or Thai food they can’t cook it well and charge you twice the price for the privilege. With an early start the next day to catch our ferry to Koh Lanta we donated our free cocktail voucher to two Finnish chaps in cocktail bar that was up a dangerously windy and steep spiral staircase - I wonder how many people fall down that every week after indulging in one too many Changs.

Before settling down for the night we went and had a quick chat with a chap from one of the many dive centres on Phi Phi ... we’re wanting to do some diving in Thailand before we go and had planned on doing an Open Water certification in Koh Tao but from chatting with this guy we happened upon a problem, as I’m technically asthmatic (a bit wheezy when my hayfever’s bad) I need to be signed off by a doctor before they take me diving, in case I have an attack 18m down. Bit of a blow. Especially as there are only 2 or 3 places in Thailand that you can get a properly qualified doctor, so that’s something else for us to sort out before Koh Tao. (Diving courses on Koh Tao are 4000 baht cheaper than on Phi Phi, which helped us to decide where to do the course!)

Phi Phi is definitely a place I would recommend everyone to go it. But as ever, we had to make the decision to leave so that we would get around all of the places we wanted to see, so we booked a ticket by ferry to Koh Lanta for 270baht each and off we went.

So hopefully we’ll get the Koh Lanta blog up for you soon!

Love Cate and Matt x

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Photos

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Tasty "craps" ... no thank you.

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Phi Phi Ley

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The view from our first guesthouse

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The LONG walk up to the viewpoint

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The view from the top

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Suncream and sweat, not an ideal combination.

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100 baht bucket joy!