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Published: February 23rd 2014
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We took the 2 hr. long 0900 ferry ($13) from Krabi Town pier to Ko Phi Phi Don, our final beach destination for this trip. Ko Phi Phi is supposed to be the most beautiful island in Thailand and have some of the best diving so I decided to book 3 nights there to finish off our trip. The island has two emerald and jade colored bays separated by a sandy isthmus where the main town and bars are. Towering limestone cliffs line the coastline.
I had reserved a sleep aboard boat that goes to Maya Bay, the famous postcard perfect beach used in the 1999 Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach. This beach gets a lot of tourist traffic during the day, but it is an uninhabited island so it is empty at night. The sleep aboard is the only boat allowed there at night, and it only holds 30 passengers.
Our boat left at 1430 and headed to Ko Phi Phi Leh island, 5km south of Ko Phi Phi Don. On the way we stopped at Viking Cave, one of the best places for collecting the Swiftlet bird nests. The cave was named Viking because of the numerous
Viking ship murals found inside. Many sea caves in the Adaman Sea have drawing dating back 2,000-3,000 years by numerous mariners passing through.
We stopped for snorkeling before we went onward to Maya Bay, one of our most anticipated highlights of our trip. The bay is flanked by high rocky crags on either side, with a long and beautiful blond sandy beach in between. Unlike in the movie, the interior is quite small and you can walk through the jungle to the other side within 5 minutes. We stayed on the beach, snorkeling and swimming until all the crowds began to disperse after sunset.
We had dinner on the beach, which we had all to ourselves and our new friends that dotted the globe from the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Our hilarious stoner local guide serenaded us with Rastafarian Thai renditions of all the latest pop songs, most of which had us all in tears laughing so hard. I have been singing his version of Rihanna’s “shine bright like a diamond” for days much to Dennis’s chagrin, replacing the word diamond with plankton in my worst Thai accent.
After gorging on food and buckets of rum
and vodka, we got back onto the boat and did what every irresponsible tourist does in Thailand, went swimming in the pitch dark jumping off the boat into the dark waters! We saw some bioluminescent plankton as we were wading in the shallow water, but not until we were jumping into the inky dark waters did we truly see the magnificent display of bioluminescence. Each stroke through the water looked like a fireworks display, so beautiful and magical words cannot even describe. In fact it was so awe inspiring none of us even considered the creepiness of swimming in the dark in deep waters.
After we boarded and took our “showers” which consisted of 2 ladles of fresh water over our heads, we climbed up to the tip top deck and nestled into sleep beside to our 2 German friends. We had assumed the sleep aboard had cabin sleeping arrangements, but we were given sleeping mats and a light sleeping bag to place wherever we wanted on the decks. It was about as minimal as you can get, but a truly awesome experience unlike any other.
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