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Published: March 19th 2006
From Kota Kinabalu, we flew out the following morning to Kuala Lumpur and stayed overnight in a nice hotel with a pool on the roof, before flying the next day to Phuket. We have forgotten to mention so far that every flight we have taken so far we thought that we would die! The turbulence in SE Asia is a lot worse than that in Australia (we checked this with a pilot at our hotel in KL). Once flying Vietnamese Airlines nearing the landing strip, the engines would run down, then start up, then run down, then start up… the plane was going down, up, down, up, getting that feeling of falling in your gut, it was terrifying. Neither of us admitted it to the other at the time, but we both thought that we were about to crash die!! Air Asia is not much better, we thought that there was smoke coming into our cabin at one time too, but it was the air-conditioning, and for some reason it looked like smoke.
Our guesthouse in Phuket, Sabbbie, is brand new, only two weeks old, AU$20 a night with air-con, cable TV, and hot water. It is only about 10
Patong Beach
Love the trashyness..minutes walk to the beach, but we decided to catch a moto for the first time instead. The front reception girl from our hotel just stood on the street and yelled ‘MOTORBIKE’ and about three came riding up the street! Patong Beach is so trashy, we love it! But then again, we have been trashy while here! The beach is lined with so many beach chairs, as far as the beach stretches, restaurants on the sand, vendors selling ‘The best pineapple and watermelon in Thailand! Cheap! Cheap!’ selling board shorts, and so, so many women with their floppers (our favourite new word for boobs) out! Lots of seedy old western men, with stunning Asian women too, and bright red sunburn on every English girl! We had an early night that night due to an early flight and lots of traveling.
On our second day in Patong, we didn’t feel like being too trashy, and decided to rent out a motorbike and ride to a more deserted part (since we don’t get our floppers out, we were out of place). We didn’t find the beach we were looking for, but came across one called Tritrang Beach (I think) and had
Restaurants at Patong
These restaurants have seating on the sand as well as undercover lunch in a little bungalow on the cliff above the beach. There were only 3 other people on this beach, and the water was perfectly clear, which was the reason why we saw a sea snake in the shallow water. Freakin Hell! Will we ever be free of snakes!! It was about 50cm long, but not too thick, it was the same colour as the sand and just swam along. So we ran out of the water, and once again worked on our tans.
We rode back to Patong, and got pulled over by the police! We were trying to find the post office, and drove the wrong way up a one way street. We didn’t have our passports, licenses, or anything else that he wanted. We didn’t realise that there were road rules here, since the rest of SE Asia doesn’t. He told us we needed our license and sent us home. So with our license in our pocket, we headed back to the post office, and then hit the town. We stumbled into the first club we could find, Dragon Bar, and played some pool. We were having a good time, the club was just about empty,
Tritrang Beach
There were swings just hanging from the trees. Very cool. and next time we turned around, there were strippers everywhere! HA! There were about 16 on stage at once! The music was great, and the girls were hot! It was very tasteful (despite all the flashing neon lights) they left their bikinis on, so we stayed all night. We had befriended a staff member who was also gay, and she looked after us all night. So after many tiger beers, popcorn, and vodka red bulls we stumbled home at 2am for a 7am pickup for Phi Phi Islands. On our way home we stopped at our laundry ladies house, because they were having a party for her birthday with some friends and her ladyboys. So after more drinks, we finally got home, and our guesthouse had given us a free remote control car. Don’t know why, but it was fun to play with when you are drunk, but now it is a bitch to carry!
The next seedy seedy morning we got picked up by minibus and headed to the ferry terminal for a boat ride to Phi Phi Don. We had pre arranged accommodation at PP Casita Bungalows, which were fantastic, except that they didn’t have air-conditioning and
Tsunami Warnings
These signs are everywhere it was about 40 degrees. We chilled out at the beach and again worked on our tans. Phi Phi is a cute little island, with no motorised transport, which was affected by the Tsunami. There was a lot of construction still taking place, and a lot of the residents are still refugees with no place to live. Although foreign aid was provided to Thailand, the government has still not provided people with new homes yet, because they want to change the town planning, and wont let any construction take place without a permit. So although these people have the money to build new homes, the government prevents it. It is a very sad situation for a lot of people who lost everything.
On our second day in Phi Phi, we decided to take a long tail boat taxi to Phi Phi Ley, the smaller of the two islands. We saw Maya Bay and Loh Sama Bay, as well as Monkey Bay on Phi Phi Don.
Loh Samah Bay was so beautiful, not too many beaches, but good snorkeling and beautiful water. Once again I got bitten by something. This time the fish left two bite marks and scratches
and drew blood from its sharp little teeth, leaving marks about the size of a 5c piece. Little shit. I was out of the water in a second! I didn’t see what bit me, only a dark little shadow coming at me. I am emotionally scarred for life from ever snorkeling again!
Maya Bay is where they filmed the movie The Beach, and although it was very popular and a lot of tourists were around, it was the most beautiful place we have ever seen, and didn’t want to leave. The water is amazing, perfect, crystal clear! Even when you are there, you cannot believe your eyes. This has to be a good omen for my beautiful niece Maya! All the tourists left at one point, so it was basically ours! It was so so so good. Cannot put it into words the beauty of this place. I doubt that there is anywhere in the world that can top this beach. We were so sad to leave this beautiful place, knowing that we may never see it again 😞
When we arrived at Monkey Beach, there were no monkeys! What a let down after Maya Bay. But we
wandered up the far end of the beach and they were sitting on the rocks. There were about 10 monkeys, all different sizes, and stupid tourists, all different sizes teasing them with food and making them agro. I can’t believe how stupid these tourist were, watching the monkeys nearly attack someone, and continue baiting them. We kept enough distance between us and them, and got great photos. At one point four monkeys jumped in someone’s canoe and started rifling through all their things. One monkey managed to hold up a water bottle to drink from it!
When we got back to Phi Phi Don the tide was out, and the shallow water was too hot to swim in so we went to a pool with a swim up bar. It cost about $6 to swim there, but it was well worth it, with cold water, waterfall and booze. We had dinner right on the beach and ate lobster and thai curry to celebrate our two year anniversary the next day (which was spent traveling across Thailand 😞 ).
On our last day in Phi Phi we had to check out of our hotel at 11am, and our boat
Phi Phi Don
This beach was one minute walk from our bungalow. departed at 2pm, so we decided it was too much of an inconvenience to go swimming and we spent the day shopping instead. It was over 40 degrees, I nearly died, there is just about no air-conditioning on the island, but we watched a movie and had some lunch. Someone came to interrupt our movie for a news update on Tsunami. There had been an earthquake under the water at Krabi, and they were going to sound the alarms for evacuation, but the waves ended up only being about 1 meter high.
We hopped on our boat to head home, and had one last night at Patong before leaving for Koh Phangang the next morning. We spent another night at Dragon Club to go visit our new friends, and only seem to get drunk and hung over when we get picked up at 7am by a minibus!
Love your guts
Jenny and Erin xx PS Mum we are safe!
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From Hamish
Man, i am envious of you guys, the weather looks great and you guys also look great. I hope your better and fully recovered Erin from your food poisoning. Take care guys and great photos and a well informative journal. Regards - Hamish