THE Beach

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KOH PHI PHI

Well this is a different pace of life! We get off the ferry and are pointed over to the tourist information shops there that are actually really well set up. They have the pictures info and prices of all of the available hotels on the island. It is not that big, so it is quiet a easy operation to run! The one my sister had recommended on long beach was unfortunately too expensive, so we plumped for a cheaper one in the town, The White 2 Hotel. It was a hotel painted all white, can you believe it!, with a huge double bed, Air Con and FREE Wi-Fi!

A man was sent to pick us up and as there are no motorised vehicles on the island he turns up with a big wheelie trolley thing for our bags and walks us through the streets to our hotel. After we had checked in we heard from Nick and Danielle, who had come here a day before us, that they had found a room for a great price above the Pirate bar, not far from where we are. Ho hum! We went out after for dinner in a nice looking place called Cosmic restaurant. It was full and very busy, so we decided this was a good sign. We were to eat here a few times over the coming days along with another place, that we can’t remember the name of that had an any steak for 199 baht sign out side. We had amazing fillet steak with all the sides and as much as you can eat salad from the table out front, that was actually really nice, even Liam enjoyed the salad!

Again days of chilling, relaxing, shopping and beaching but some of the highlights for us were haggling for the goods that we wanted from some off the stalls, visiting all of tattoo shops, trying to decide if we wanted to get a tattoo, getting our feet eaten by fish again, which actually really helped Charlotte’s Mosquito bites from Koh Lanta. They say it is the healing bacteria the fish leave behind and although they made them bleed, they all healed very quickly after that.

We had a half day boat tour on a long boat over to Koh Phi Phi Leh (little) and Maya beach, the famous bay from “The Beach” A lot smaller than expected and full of tourists and boats! Madness, but glad we went there. The next stop was the highlight, 10 minutes, which was more like 50 minutes as the captain did not have a watch!, of snorkelling. Loads of beautiful coral and fish. We got to swim through loads of them as people on the boat feed them with handfuls of bread.

Off to Monkey beach, where they were not quite as brazen as in Koh Lanta, in fact you almost had to beg them to come down to the beach. Again there were a couple of Ozzy’s on the boat who had to be back by a certain time to get there ferry, or I am sure we would have been out longer. Taking us back to the beach we had come from we had to wade to shore as it was low tide, but where we had been in and out of the water we were all wet any way, so did not mind. They had supplied us with these great waterproof bags, that unfortunately we had to return.

The last evening was the walk we had been putting off , the walk up to Sunset view. Caroline recommended it and said it was not as bad as heart attack hill, so we were game. We walked through the village and following the signs up to the first point. Lots of steps and a little hard, but worth it when you get up there. We cooled down for a bit, took some pictures and finished our water. Very nice, but enough was enough we decided to return to the village, Charlotte left her camera case on the rock we were sitting on, but a nice young chap called out and ran it down to her.

Going back the way we came, we saw there was another viewpoint further on, feeling recovered we headed out for the short walk, which turned out to be another long, hard, steep walk! Culminating in a rock climb at the end (we saw people coming down, so thought it was the way up, not seeing the rest of the path!). We made it just in time for sunset and guess who was at the top? Yep, Nick and Danielle, so we had time for a little catch up.

Back to the village and time for some last minute haggling before home, pack and bed! Some might ask if we partook of the island BUCKET’s. No unfortunately we did not indulge in this particular beverage untill the next island, although all of the bars were giving out free buckets at certain times of the night. Infact if you collected all of the flyers offering free buckets, it is said you could bar hop along the beach for a free night of drinking! We did however make it to the Reggae bar for a large Chang and got to watch some Thai Boxing.

We also booked a joint ticket to get us from Koh Phi Phi all the way over to the other side of the coast to Koh Pha ngan, so we were up early and down at the ferry raring to go.

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