Koh Phi Phi

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Traveling to Koh Phi Phi, we did not really know what to expect. We had heard mixed reviews of the place, although the ever reliable Oli had ranted and raved about the place with as much gusto as a young Freddie Mercury in front of a Wembley audience. OK, so he wasn't quite so hyped up about the place, but he said he really enjoyed it and that we should go. His advice, which ranged from obtaining the best price at market stalls to protecting our sphincters by asking for our food to be "not too spicey" ("meh phed" for anyone who is interested), was yet to steer us in the wrong direction so we followed orders and headed to the opposite beach to where we had been dropped off on Phi Phi Don in search of a place to stay.

We stopped at a few places, but the prices seemed to be circling around the same area, so in the end we took a punt at a place called Harmony House for 1,200baht a night for a three bed room with a fan and television. We checked in, donned our swim shorts, mine being the small luminous pink shorts I had procured in Koh Phangan, and headed for the beach. The sun was searing and the sea was a turquiose blue which was offset by a sweeping white sand beach. The bay itself curved round like a crescent moon providing just a small opening out to the open water. It was clear that we would be able to spend some serious time here to recharge our batteries as long as the weather permitted. We undertook a plethora of day to day activities which included sunbathing, beach football...er...sunbathing. You can while away the hours here doing not very much at all and at times the only company you need is your iPod or a good book, or a shit one. Gibbo seemed to enjoy reading Russel Brand's Booky Wook 2 or "Booky Wooky" as he had come to know it. The previous two statements are of course completely unrelated.

Amongst our busy schedule we did find time to fit in some more meaningful activities such as ascending the 2,367,too,many,000 steps to the Phi Phi view points. There are three of these and are all easily found by following the Tsunami evacuation route (reassuring). The trail takes you up to some amazing spots to take photos of the island, providing an excellent view of both of Phi Phi Don's bays which back onto eachother; imagine a crescent moon laying down on a mirror and you arent a million miles away from the shape of the island. For you girls, imagine the Chanel symbol and there you have it, the beaches being where the two Cs overlap in the middle. The climb was genuinely quite exhausting and gave our quads an excellent workout but was well worth the effort as the views were quite something. We rewarded ourselves with a customary ice cream, which had become far too frequent an occurance, and a bit more sunbathing and footy. When the tide was out we were left with a nigh on perfect surface for a bit of beach footy; the low tide left an island of perfectly compacted sand just off the shore which was easy to reach within a few steps.

Captain Maxey (trusty Oli) had insisted that we head to a restaurant called Papaya. We headed there full of anticipation and a slight apprehension as it is well known that had the Titanic been made out of the same stuff as Oli"s stomach lining, it would have simply sniffed at the ice berg as if to say "is that all you've got!?", reaching New York needing little more than a lick of paint. Once we had eventually located the restaurant we were somewhat taken by surprise at its appearance...a garage. Not to be deterred by its humble appearance we sat down and ordered our food; Garlic Chicken and rice for me, Sweet and Sour Chicken for Tom and a Massaman Curry for Jake. Each portion was gargantuan, delicious and provided outstanding value. Gievn our experience it was difficult to justify eating anywhere else, but it has to be said that a little place round the corner called Tom Yam was also very good and cheap, albeit somewhat less generous with their portion sizes. Ironically enough, the owner of Tom Yam was a dead ringer for Oli's dad, Nigel (I am now finished with the Oli related anecdotes). We continued to eat at Papaya throughout the week, although not every day, finding that people frequently had to wait for tables. The chap running the place certainly earned his money, rushing around like a blue-arsed fly making sure that everyone was served and taking their money so he could turn the tables. The cats in the fridge also seemed to be a huge crowd pleaser!

After being harassed by incessantly for several days by just about anyone lining the port side of the island we crumbled and parted with 1500baht to hire a private boat to Maya bay (where "The Beach" was filmed), which would also allow us to do some snorkelling on the way there. The snorkelling was by far the most memorable experience of this particular trip as we got to test out Jake's underwater camera, snapping some awesome shots of tropical fish which we would have been lucky to see Scuba diving in Koh Tao! The water was the clearest salt water I had ever seen which made for perfect snorkelling conditions. I thoroughly recommend that anybody hitting Phi Phi does this without fail. The beach itself was pretty epic, however you should not expect the idyllic scenes that made this place famous; when you arrive and there is a speedboat full of pissed up tourists, revving its engine and blazing Shaun Kingston "music"you know that the location has become a charicature of its formerly glorious self. This said, when the beach started to empty as the tourists headed back to the larger island you got a glimpse of what it would have been like to have discovered this incredible place in the days of lesser fame.

The nightlife on Phi Phi was pretty cool, cool being just about the right word for it. It seemed to be far less rowdy than Koh Phangan and it struck us as absurd that the Bars and clubs, by large, seemed to call it a night at half one in the morning, supposedly as a sign of respect for the King's son who was shot on the island...we never managed to substantiate this claim. We were, however, able to have some good nights on the beach where all the action seemed to be kicking off at a place called Sunset bar which was close to the Rolling Stoned bar where you could chill on some of the weird beach cushion beds and try (emphais on the word "try") to focus on the stars in a drunken haze. We discovered that the best approach to end up in this sort of shape was to buy one beer at a bar, sit out by the beach and subsequently follow these with beers we sneakily purchased at the 7/11 equivalents for a fraction of the price paid at the bar. Either that or you could drink buckets til your liver's content or have a crack at supping the dirty Thai rum which was cheaper than chips. Admittedly, it did taste as though you might die. One night, Tom's birthday, sticks out in my mind for a number of reasons; I felt rough but finally persuaded myself to drink in order to stop Tom crying, Jake writing "Gibbo is a twat" in the sand in hope that Tom and I would laugh off some of the tension created by my lack of enthusiasm to drink, and a girl-beast practically raping a poor, poor guy who had drunk his fill of buckets only to be accosted by another one. She was gross, he was drunk...and we were filming :D

We had heard rumour of there being a football pitch somewhere on the island. In our bid to locate said pitch, we inadvertantly played football in someone's garden. No wonder the locals were less than pleased when we asked if we could play. We quickly gave up on the search and decided to check out the beach on the other side of the island, where we had been dropped off. We set ourselves down on a really nice, quaint part of the beach and did some keepie-uppies and sunbathing...oh hang on a minute, it's been a while since I've written about my stomach; nature felt that it was probably about time to remind me that it was still kicking about and as such I sprinted, pink short clad, across a field to a shop in desperate search of a reprieve from my panic. Once relieved, I realise that the field I had sprinted across was the football pitch we had heard so little about and seen even less of. I alerted the lads to my discovery, which was impressively shadowed by a huge cliff face. The surface could have done with a little TLC but the location got top marks. We soon discovered that the locals played a series of matches there at around half five every day, where teams would roll on and off at junctures which were not exactly clear to us mere foreigners; for example, I think both teams changed every time somebody hit the post. We joined in, I showed myself up by failing to complete a pass for a minute or five (come on I've had six months out of footy!), Gibbo moaned, and Jake was ever reliable. Some village idiot kid shot every time he got the ball, regardless of where he was on the pitch. Nobody seemed to say anything. We didn't pass to him.

We had thoroughly enjoyed our week on Phi Phi and it would be a location I would return to without as much as a second thought. Next on our adventure trail was Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. We bid adieu to the south and boarded our boat to Phuket where we would catch out plane to Chiang Mai.

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[tommybynumbers]

Date change
We left on the 4th of March, not too important but worthy of note :)