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Published: March 19th 2013
First things first - Koh Phi Phi is not a quiet, undiscovered island. It is full almost all the time (especially in high season from November-April) and as it is so small can feel quite claustrophobic. Loud parties on the beach go on until 4am every night (in 2011 there were only 3 parties a week which went on til 2am), and the village doesn't close down until 2am (previously mid-night). Accomodation, for the standard you get, is expensive compared to other islands in Thailand. Locals appear to be less friendly and more greedy than elsewhere we have been. However, it still has beautiful beaches, good restaurants and stunning views across the ocean, as well as a great traveller vibe which is why we chose to come here. We took a 2 hour ferry there from Krabi and even though it had been over 2 years since our last visit (at the end of our trip in Jan 2011), it didn't seem to have changed at all, if anything it was more beautiful than we remembered, which is a good thing as its such a tiny island I don't think it could handle any more development, but on the other hand
it was also a lot more ugly. We walked through the narrow streets with our heavy bags on looking for accomodation, but we sort of knew where we were heading towards as we wanted to try and find where we stayed before, at the end of the vilage in a quiet-ish spot. On our last visit it was peak season just after New Year so prices were crazy high on the island and it was full to capacity. This time because the island wasn't packed (but still busy), prices were lower but still too high for us - 1000 Baht for a fan room?! We soon found a place nearby though which on first glance appeared to be ok, even though it was still 800 Baht for a fan room with cold water, but this seemed to be the lowest price for a room on the island so we took it...big mistake!
Anyway, we dumped our bags and headed down to the beach which was every bit as pretty as we remembered, and the weather was glorious so we spent the afternoon relaxing and swimming. Around 3pm the tide went out really far and you had to walk for
ages to be in water up to your knees which wasn't so great when you needed to cool off, but we had a nice few hours all the same. That evening we got ready to go out and realised how smokey the room smelt, plus the shower water had a really wierd suplhur like smell which was horrible, like rotton eggs, and to top it off the tap water which we were about to brush our teeth with was coming out brown! It was quite late so we vowed to speak to the owner about this in the morning, as for 800 Baht a night we at least expected clean water. We went for some dinner at one of the many restaurants in the village which was really nice - especially as the Thai curries were on special - and as we had had a few chilled days in Krabi we fancied having a few drinks, so went to one of the bars in town. It started off pretty calmly but we soon met a group of Chinese people on holiday, and as in China they were super friendly (if a bit OTT) and invited us to join them. We
thought there was just a few of them but it turned out there were at least 15-20 of them, and after giving us some of their beers (and taking photo's of us!) we started a game of Beer-Pong. We should have remembered from our time in China that some Chinese people can't really drink a lot, and before one game was over they were really drunk and Scott was having to drink all the beer! Needless to say he was quite merry a short while after and so buckets in hand, we decided to check out the party down on the beach. It was a good atmosphere down there and a really fun night and we stayed down there until the early hours, drinking and dancing on the sand. We have to say that there are a lot of Scandinavian and Russian people on Phi Phi, and the women especially love to throw some crazy shapes whilst dancing! So we had a lot of fun just people watching too.
The next morning we woke up feeling not so great, as not only did we get to bed late but then I couldn't sleep for ages due to some really
noisy people outside, the room still really smelt smokey and we couldn't brush our teeth because of the gross water, so I got up and spoke to the owner about it to see if we could change rooms. Gone were the smiles when he had taken our money the day before, and all I got was 'You either accept it or find somewhere else to stay, this is Phi Phi'...OK! Needless to say I was less than impressed with his attitude so went out to find another room for us to move to. It's really hard to find decent budget accomodation on this island, and several places I asked at that were advertising 'cheap' rooms were charging over 1,000 Baht for a fan room - thats not cheap! Due to the popularity of this island though they can pretty much charge what they want and people pay it because there aren't a lot of choices, especially when the island is busy and places are full. Luckily I soon found a nice room which even had air con and hot water for just a bit more than what we were paying for the crap place we were currently in, and with
a friendly owner, so I went back to Scott who was packing up and we happily walked out and gave the bemused looking owner the room key, like he thought we would stay there for even one more minute!
Anyway, by this point it was 11am and whilst we were tired we wanted to hike up to the viewpoint which we hadn't done before. It was sunny and hot but armed with water we set off thinking it would be a relatively easy walk. Wrong! We hiked uphill for over 25 minutes up steep steps and in the heat it was really tough, especially for me, so we had to make a few rest stops - we had really underestimated this. Eventually we made it to Viewpoint 1 (after paying 20 Baht each to a lady who had around 8 cats surrounding her?!) and when we caught our breath and looked out the views were absolutely amazing and well worth the effort to get up here. You could look over both sides of the bay and the turquoise waters looked so blue, and as it was quiet it really looked like a paradise down below. We took a moment
to try and imagine what it must have been like when the Tsunami hit in 2004, if you were up here looking out at the whole island and you just saw this wave of destruction completly wipe it out - scary to say the least. We then walked up further to viewpoint 2 which again offered stunning views of the island and the tranquility from up here was a world apart to what it was like down below. The hike was hard but we are definately glad we did it, and going down was easier than going up. After our morning exursion we were both shattered and didn't want to be in the sun for a while, so after a very naughty lunch of Burgers from an Irish bar (we felt bad but they were soo good) we went back to our nice new room and had a sleep for a couple of hours to recover and get some energy back for that night. On Phi Phi you really don't have a choice but to go out every night as it's usually too noisy to be in your room before 1am!
After we had caught up on our sleep
we headed down to the beach to catch the last of the day’s sun, before getting ready for the evening. We went for dinner and broke our diet of Thai food by having pasta in a small restaurant we had visited and liked last time we were here, which was still delicious, then had a few DIY drinks. We then headed to the Rolling Stoned bar where a live band were playing who were pretty good, had a few games of pool and decided to head to the beach for one more drink. It was just as busy down there as the night before and all was going well until we went into a shop to buy a beer and had a bit of an incident with the Thai security guys in there. While Scott was buying a beer I put a tiny bit of what I thought was body moisturiser on my leg, but it turned out to be body wash so foamed up and I couldn’t get it off. The next thing we knew the security guys were screaming in our faces and aggressively telling us we had to buy it, even though I kept apologising and saying
I didn’t want it as it wasn’t what I thought and I only tested the tiniest amount. In a flash, three of them turned physically violent to Scott (he got a couple of punches to the face) and locked the door to the shop so we couldn’t get out. In the end we just paid and left the shop quite shaken up and not really believing what just happened to us. Perhaps they would get some sort of commission from the police if they could get a Westerner arrested, we don’t know, but are pretty sure corruption played some part in this and they wanted a reaction (which they didn't get) as they were continuously provoking. We don’t want to dwell on it too much, and we are fine, but we will say that what happened was unprovoked and totally unnecessary and would urge anyone going to avoid the Phi Phi Palms mini market on the corner by the beach at all costs. We went to bed angry and feeling that we needed to leave the island the next day.
In the morning after a sleep, we both felt quite down and booked onto a boat to leave Phi
Phi later that day. We just felt like what had happened the night before had tainted our time on the island and we didn’t want to be there anymore. It’s such a shame as we were enjoying ourselves and even though Phi Phi gets a lot of negative feedback we were trying to overlook it all as we liked the island, but in reality mass tourism and irresponsible development has wrecked most of this tiny island, a lot of the locals are jaded and moody and prices are higher for accommodation than anywhere we have been in Thailand. Plus, it's way too busy.
We were quite subdued all day and I think we both kept replaying the events in our head, still in disbelief about it all. We chose to go to Koh Lanta for our last stop in Thailand, as even though we were tempted to leave the country asap and head into Malaysia, we didn’t want our last memory of a country we have loved to be a bad one. We hadn’t planned on visiting Koh Lanta so hadn’t done any research on it, we only hoped it would be just what we needed to end our
time in Thailand on a good note. Would we come to Phi Phi again? Probably not. There are so many other great places in Thailand in future we will steer clear of these over-developed tourist 'hot spots' and venture further afield to islands less discovered and more special.
S&V's Travel Info & Tips: General Info: Approx 44 Baht to £1. Thailand is getting more expensive as the pound weakens (and by the looks of it so will the remainder of our destinations on this trip). Transportation: An easy 2 hour ferry from Krabi town - Phi Phi costs 300 Baht, you can book at any travel agent in Ao Nang. Food: Lots of nice places to eat on Phi Phi, our favourites were Cosmic restaurant for its great pasta and pizza, the place next door (can't remember the name of it) for Thai curries and Paddy's Place opposite for a burger. Accomodation: Definately don't stay at Sasha's guesthouse unless you like brown water! Our stay at P&P House in the village was nice, the room with a/c and hot water was 900 Baht. Other observations: x) Considering Phi Phi is a small island, it's transport links to pretty much every else in Thailand (and some to Malaysia) were good and reasonably priced - lots of agencies to help you book but we liked Oasis.
xx) We noticed a lot of people left their rubbish (water bottles, plastic bags, crisp packets, beer bottles etc) on the beach after sitting on it all day - if there is one thing we hate more than almost anything its littering, especially on the beach.
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Donna and Neil
Donna and Neil
Bad eggs...
Don't let a couple of bad eggs ruin the rest of your time in Thailand or put you off going back. 95% of Thais are genuinely honest and kind people but that remaining 5% happen to be in over-touristed places like Phi Phi and give the others a bad name. We have had a few experiences like you, once in Ao Nang where a watch vendor tried to hit Neil because he asked for the price to be lowered and the other just a week ago where a car hire guy tried to say we damaged his car when we didn't and scam money from us. Koh Lanta is a lovely island, hopefully you will enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand.