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Published: January 19th 2007
With "ready made friends", we chose to stay on Phi Phi for over a week - plenty of time to get to know the place better and to get stuck into Sangsom buckets!
Phi Phi is much more touristy than we expected (the fame that came from The Beach movie appears to be one of the major catalysts), it is therefore quite expensive by Thailand standards and overrun with Europeans (like us). You can still happily live on the island without making trips to the mainland as there are plenty of amenities to keep you going for longer than a short stay.
The beaches aren't the best we've seen as they're generally crowded and any chance of serenity is destroyed by the constant noise of the incoming tourist boats and noisy chugging long-tails. Much of the damage the tsunami caused has been cleared and the island is starting afresh - there's lots of development going on and you can guarantee that in a few years time it will be full of 5 star resort accommodation. We were impressed with how the families living on the island and businesses have just got on with things, rebuilding the infrastructure and putting
the past behind them. There are some fabulous bays near to Phi Phi town that can be reached by long boat or speed boat taking you away from the main crowds to your own private beach.
Not content with spending our time here simply drinking in Tiger Bar, eating out in a variety of restaurants serving international cuisine or lying in bed late into the afternoon (nice for a change), we decided to make the most of the reasonably priced PADI dive courses and explored Phi Phi's colourful reefs. The course takes three days and includes practical and theory work teaching students about recreational diving. After completing a series of written exercises and some important but timely DVD watching - Tommy fell asleep through part of one, demerit 😞 - we headed to a confined water area to learn our first skills which we'd take to the open water. We confidently completed the trickier exercises of clearing a mask and replacing a lost regulator although in a depth of 2 metres it's not too scarey. Then we headed to the open water to prove our competency at greater depths. In all we completed four dives, each time practising some
skills with the rest of the dive simply being wowed by the beautiful scenery underwater. I must admit, I was a little nervous both by what "strange" underwater creatures we were going to see but also about picking up a pen after such a long time and sitting an exam. The guys at "Princess Diving" were awesome though, they offered us a more personal service than those experienced elsewhere on the island and at the diving conveyor belt at Koh Tao, with a maximum of 4 people in the group.
The diving experience was AMAZING, the greatest depth we went to was 18m but a freezing cold thermocline meant we didn't stay there for long. We spent most of our time at 10-12m passing huge coral walls brimming with marine life. Hornsbill turtles, jelly fish, black tip reef sharks, leopard sharks, moray eels, blue-spotted sting rays, lion fish, scorpion fish, puffer fish, thousands of varieties of butterfly, damsel, trigger, angel, clown fish - need I go on the list of things we saw was endless and all of it in amongst the beautiful, colourful coral gardens.
Both of us were able to complete the water tests and we
passed our written tests in flying colours - I got only one wrong and beat Tommy (he called me a swot, 1-0 to me!). We now have realised that we should have completed our PADI in Fiji so we could have experienced the world beating reefs there of the Great Barrier reef in Oz. Oh well you live and learn, there'll be plenty of opportunities in the future...
Also, click on our previous blog link to see the New Year's photos I didn't have time to upload before:
Ha-Phi-Phi New Year!
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gabriel mcnair
non-member comment
happy new year
I wish you guys much joy and happiness in this year and the rest of the ahead of you may all the dreams that you have longed for come to pass may you have the best of time through your travels