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Published: October 11th 2007
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More catch up, but we’re getting closer. After the long bus ride from Cambodia we finally made it back to Bangkok where we stayed for a day and a bit. On the 17th (August still) we got a flight down to the island of Phuket on the west coast of the peninsula. We were greeted by some rain which stuck around for most of the time we were on the island. We stayed in the Kata Beach area and spent most of our time dodging raindrops and relaxing. We did get a few hours here and there where the rain wasn’t coming down but it wasn’t really the bright sunny paradise we had expected. I guess that’s the monsoon season for you.
On our 4th day we finally got enough of a break in the weather to head out on a boat tour. Our first stop was to “James Bond Island” which is really nothing more than a rock outcropping that they used in The Man with the Golden Gun as the evil guys hideout. It was a nice area but it is really funny how they have made such a tourist trap of the place. From there we headed out
to a couple of the other islands in the area that have caves which we could kayak around. The guys from the boat took us out in inflatable kayaks and paddled us around the different areas and showed us different caves on the different island. At the end of the tour we went to a floating village where we were able to walk around some shops.
The next day we got a ferry over to Ko Phi Phi Island. We had another wet and windy day so the ferry ride was a bit interesting but we finally made it to the island and found a guesthouse in the village. The main area of the island is located on a thin isthmus that has two bays on either side. This area was ravaged by the tsunami in 2004 as waves came from both sides and met in the middle destroying most of the area. There was still a lot of rebuilding going on while we were there and a small memorial park had been set up for the 20,000 or so tsunami victims.
We were finally blessed with some nice weather the next day and we took a long tailed boat
to one of the beaches just around the corner. We practically had the beach to ourselves and enjoyed a nice quiet day on the beach and in the water. We did more of the same on the next day at the village beach.
On our third day on Phi Phi we headed out on a half day snorkelling trip out to Ko Phi Phi Lei which is the smaller sister island to Ko Phi Phi Don where we were staying. This also happens to be the now famous island where the movie The Beach was filmed. We started off the morning by doing a quick snorkel in a small, shallow bay inside the walls of the island where we saw some small black tip reef sharks. We then moved to a nice wall site and drifted along the wall checking out the soft corals, hard corals, tons of fish, a banded sea snake, and a few more black tipped reef sharks. We finished up the trip by checking out the now famous “Beach”, which was a real zoo of boats and bathers, and monkey beach back on Phi Phi Don.
On the 25th we had a marathon travel day from
Ko Phi Phi to Ko Pha Ngan which involved taking a ferry to Krabi, a bus to Surat Thani, another bus to a pier for Ko Pha Ngan, and then finally a ferry to Ko Pha Ngan. We were heading over to Ko Pha Ngan to find some good diving and to check out the world famous Full Moon Party. We ended up finding a place to stay at Mellow Backpackers which was really a mellow little place.
We ran into some more rain on our first day so we didn’t do too much and ended up hanging around the beach area in front of our backpacker and talking with the very friendly staff. The next day we decided to get adventurous so we rented a scooter and did our best Evil Knievel impersonation. We road up the west coast to Hat Yao beach where we did some snorkelling and relaxed on the beach. We also booked a dive trip to Ko Tao island for the next day.
On the 28th, full-moon day, we were picked up by the dive company and got on the boat for the 2 hour boat ride to Ko Tao. We stopped at the south
east tip of the island. We stopped at two different sites in this area that were around shallow boulders. Brittany snorkelled while I did two dives. We saw soft and hard corals, spotted eagle rays, puffer fish, barracuda, triggers, and even some nudibranchs.
That night we joined up with the rest of the people from our place and headed down to Hat Rin beach which is the site of the Full Moon Party. The party is held every month on the full moon and brings 10,000-30,000 people to the island and specifically to this one beach. It was really amazing to see that many people dancing around and partying on one beach. There were several areas where people were blowing fire or swinging burning poi balls (see picture). We danced the night away with our 20,000 closest friends but didn’t quite make it to sun rise.
Our last day on the island we relaxed on the beach by the backpacker and the next day we headed to Surat Thani on the mainland so that we could catch our plane back to Bangkok. Our last few days in Bangkok we shopped around some and enjoyed our last few plates of green
curry and pad Thai before heading off to Mauritius on September 1st.
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