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Sarah and I flew into Phuket and immediately hopped on to a bus into Phuket town, where we could catch a bus to Krabi. We stayed just one night in Krabi, arriving late with time to head for dinner at the local night market. Everything was incredibly cheap, with the exchange rate being $1 CND = 30 Baht. We were exhausted from a day of traveling and planned to leave early the next morning, so after dinner we headed to bed. The next morning we caught the boat from the Krabi marina to Ko Phi Phi (Pee-Pee), one of the more popular islands on the Northern Andaman Coast of Thailand. After an 1 1/2 boat ride, we thought we had landed in a tropical paradise. The island had a sharp rocky coastline, covered with dense jungle and turquois blue waters laping the white sand.
Upon arriving we were bombarded with options of places to stay, ranging from rustic beach bungalows to tree houses to 5 star resorts. Sticking to our budget Sarah and I opted for the 'Uphill Cottage' which was 500 baht a night for two single beds, private bathroom, balcony and fan. There are no cars on Phi
Phi, so a Thai man assisted Sarah and I with our packs by loading them into an industrial sized crate on wheels and proceeded to wind through the dive shops, bars and clothing stalls. We arrived at our hostel, a good 5 minute walk away from the main action and beach. The hostel was true to its name, our room was a good 30 stairs up, sitting nestled in the hillside. Nevertheless, the hostel was clean and spatious, with 'fresh' towels and sheets each day. After getting settled in Sarah and I ventured out for some lunch, picking one of the first restaurants we saw because we were starving! After we gorged ourselves on delicious Pad Thai and Green Curry, we set off to shop around for a good dive shop to book some dives while we were on the island. That night we grabbed some spring rolls from a food stall and some big Chiang (local Thai beer) and acquainted ourselves with the rif-raft that also occupied the island.
The next day we headed to the beach, which was gorgeous, however slightly disappointing from the rave reviews in the Lonely Planet. The main beach (Long Beach) has a
string of beach bars along it and nightly parties are held with fire shows and various buckets to go around. However, due to backpacker indifference and the lack of local beach combers, the pristine beaches become strewn with water bottles and garbage. One of the most devasting results due to the popularity of the island.
While soaking up the sun, we met a fellow Canadian girl, Kara, from Calgary, a Brit, James, from London and a few Irish lads. We all got along great and we ended up spending the rest of our time on Phi Phi together.
The next few days were spent hanging out on the beach during the day, having big "family" dinners with our new group of friends and then heading to the various beach bars at night. Starting at around 2pm each day, flyers would be handed out to all of the travelers for the parties happening on the beach. After a while it got more than a little annoying to continue collecting upwards of 10 flyers...all of which advertised buy one get one free buckets.
An explanation is due here. The Thai definition of Bucket:
1. Bucket - a deep
plastic container, in a variety of colours used as a cup to consume alcholic beverages. One should proceed with extreme caution when purchasing and consuming said 'bucket'
Usually buckets could be purchased at any of the small shops or at the bars and included any variety of soft drink, red bull or M-150 (a more potent version of red bull, illegal in most other countries) and a small bottle of local liquor (rum, vodka, whiskey).
Another explanation of the bars on Phi Phi is needed as well. Most westerners often think that tropical destinations usually means things are bigger, more dangerous, with fewer regulations and have fewer services to assist those unfortunate to fall victim to any of the above. Well, Phi Phi is no exception, not only do they sell cheap alcohol consumed out of containers we use to make fun little sand castles, they also have fire skipping ropes and fire hoops at the bars. As I remember from early childhood, playing with fire is never a good idea. And from what I remember of my early 20s playing with fire while drunk is an even worse idea. So since Sarah and I are now intellects,
having graduated from university, we of course used our better judgement and stayed far away from the fire and buckets......
On our 3rd day in Phi Phi, Sarah and I gave into the the local Thai women who would sing "Thai Massage" everytime we past. For a 1 hour oil massage it cost only 300 baht. Sarah having worked at a spa before she left, was more than pleased to only pay the equivalent of $10 CND for a Thai woman to pound out the knots created from her 15 kg backpack. The massage was wonderful, I was barely concious by the end. However, I was awoken as the Thai lady massaging me, bent me from side to side with my arms behind my head! After the massage, Sarah was convinced by the Thai massuse to get a foot scrub and it took little convincing for me to oblige to another 30 minute foot and leg massage! After our morning of relaxing we spent the rest of our day hanging out on the beach.
Sarah and I went diving on our 4th day on Phi Phi and chose to do two adventure dives. We completed our open water
certification in Malaysia as I mentioned before, and the next certification is called an Advanced Diver. Inorder to complete this certification you have to complete 5 more 'adventure dives', 2 of which are compulsory (deep dive to 30m and a navigation dive), and 3 of which you can choose from a list of various specialty dives. We decided to complete our deep dive, so now we are able to dive up to 30m and we completed part of one our specialty dives, which was diving with Nitrox. Nitrox aka enriched air, has a higher percentage of oxygen in it, enabling divers to go deeper and to dive for longer.
Kara decided to join us for the dives, having completed her open water cert in Ko Tao. We headed out early in the morning, after completing some theory at the dive shop. Our first dive was only about 35 minutes to 30m. We completed some safety skills underwater, as well as some experiments to show us how the pressure increases at that depth. We cracked an egg underwater, and due to the pressure the yolk of the egg floated out of the shell and stayed intacked. We were able to
poke it and hold it as it floated in front of us!! After completing our skills we explored the marine life. We saw two leopard sharks resting on the ocean floor, both about 2m in length. We also saw 2 black tip sharks, again about 2m in length, as well as a variety of coral and fish. The visibility was amazing and all three of us were soo excited when we reached the surface. Our next dive was for just under an hour and was really relaxing as we coasted nexted to the fish, who didn't seem bothered at all by us being there. Later on in the evening, we decided to trek up to the view point to get some good pictures of the island. Unfortunately the clouds didn't cooperate and the sunset was a little lackluster. We did still manage to get some good shots, the island from above basically looks like to rocky mountains covered in jungle, that are connected by a skinny strip, which is where the two back-to-back beaches are with the town and resorts in between.
On the night of June 30th, we met some fellow Canadians down at the beach bar, and
just after 12am they had decked themselves out with red and white and tattooed each other with "I AM CANADIAN". We obliged and celebrated our wonderful far off country into the wee hours of the morning.
The next day we parted ways with Kara and James and headed off by boat to Rai Ley beach with the Irish lads we had been hanging out with.
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