Hey everybody, here's some fun facts. The population in Thailand is 63 million people. It is twice the size of Wyoming. Its chief exports are textiles, footwear, and rice.
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| Pure Luxury |
After a glamorous 2 hr. ferry ride, we arrived at Ko Phi Phi, ready to check out our home for the next few days.
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| Phi Phi, prounounced like pee pee. Yep, I'm 36 with the sense of humor of a 6 year old. |
Immediately after getting off the ferry, we were greeted by the long tail boat operators.
The long tail boats are relatively unique creations. They are apparently native to Southeast Asia, and consist of a simple boat hull with an automotive engine mounted on the back. That engine drives a propeller mounted on the end of a 10-15 ft. long driveshaft, which the boat operator can pivot around to control the boat. They are definitely an interesting and effective means of travel.
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One of the many long tail boat operators
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| There are hundreds of long tails everywhere on the island. |
Our hotel had its own long tails to transport us down the beach to our accommodations. So, off we went!
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| On the way to the hotel |
Ok, now for some real fun facts: Koh actually means island in Thai, so saying we arrived on Koh Phi Phi is just saying we arrived on Phi Phi island. Also, calling it Phi Phi island is a little misleading since there are several Phi Phi islands. The island on which we stayed is called Phi Phi Don. It is the largest and most populated of the Phi Phi islands. Just off the coast of Phi Phi Don is Phi Phi Leh, the second largest Phi Phi island. It is famous for being the place where scenes from the movie "The Beach" were filmed (more on this later). Rounding out the other nearby Phi Phi islands are Bida Nok and Bida Noi. The last two are kind of why we came to Phi Phi in the first place. If you're wondering why we'd travel all this way to see what wikipedia describes as "not much more than large limestone rocks jutting out of the sea", allow me to fill you in: diving. This area has top notch scuba diving.
So, we spent our first day exploring the island a bit, and the next morning we got up bright and early, ready to put our newly acquired
Scuba diving certifications to use.
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| Beachy morning goodness |
The dive company we used is called
Blue View Divers, and we highly recommend them. If you'll allow me this bit of an aside, I want to give them a plug: Not only are they cool people and great dive guides, but they are also the only dive shop on the island that makes a point of trying to be as environmentally friendly as possible. They have a policy of trying to collect a bag of trash from the ocean and/or beaches on each dive. That really appealed to us. Also, they are the only dive shop on the island that dives off long tail boats. So instead of diving with 10 or 20 other people off a big dive ship, you get to dive with a small group off the side if a small boat. It's a very cool experience. And, if all that wasn't enough, they have an awesome new puppy in the shop. Say hi to Ben everyone!
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| Being a puppy is sooo hard |
Anyway, as I was saying we met up with our dive guide Narong, and the 1 other person who would be diving with us, and headed out on our long tail. First stop, Bida Nok.
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| Bida Nok, here we come! |
So what does it look like diving off of a long tail boat? We were wondering the same thing right up until the moment we did it. It goes a little something like this:
The diving here is pretty great. Clear water, beautiful scenery, lots of fish. Pretty spectacular really. That said, we both agreed that the diving in Bali was even better. It just goes to show how spoiled we truly are with all these wonderful places so accessible to us. Anyway, check out our diving adventures!
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| Gloria looking all majestic & stuff |
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| Always a performer |
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| Underwater photo bombing expert |
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| We saw lots of these blue starfish |
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| Just to give you an idea of the scale of things. That's our guide next to a huge coral |
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| Look ma, no hands! |
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| That is a lot of fish. I believe the technical term is "a crapload". |
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| Still performing... |
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| We're divers! |
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| Our lovely dive partner Livia surrounded by a school of bright yellow fish. |
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| Sea Urchin. They were way more sparkly in person |
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| Here fishy fishy |
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| We saw tons of these huge fans |
After around 45 minutes below the surface, it was time to head up. It's always interesting when you surface and realize what you're swimming right next to. In our case, it was this:
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| Bida Nok y'all! |
After the first dive, we were taken into Maya Bay on Phi Phi Leh. This is the place where The Beach was filmed. It is an absolutely beautiful bay with clear turquoise waters and spectacular limestone walls. Really impressive. What's not so impressive though is the throngs of tourists there. Basically, people take boats out to Phi Phi Leh and pay 300 baht (~$10) just to step onto the beach. There's nothing to do there. Just hang out and say you were on the beach. It's crazy. The bay is like a parking lot of boats and the beach is just jammed with people. We didn't do that. Rather, we went to a small beach on the opposite side of the bay where there were no people. It was a beautiful, perfect place for an early lunch and a break before our 2nd dive.
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| She married me. Seriously. Still not sure how I pulled that one off. |
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| Nom nom nom... |
After our break, it was on to dive #2! On this dive we had two really cool things happen. First, we got up close with a sea turtle. Actually several turtles. One was chomping away eating some coral. It was nuts.
Second, our guide took us through these really cool underwater tunnels. This is one of the best parts of Scuba diving - being able to swim around everywhere and just check things out.
After diving, we spent the afternoon exploring the island. One thing we noticed is that the tide here really goes out. So much so that many boats end up on land until the tide comes back in.
Also, when the tide goes out, the crabs come up. As the sun was setting, there were tons of these little guys all over the beach. But as you walked near them, they all scurried into their holes. We tried standing very still and after a couple minutes they'd all come back out. Pretty funny.
Speaking of sunsets, they are pretty amazing here.
We found a funky little bar called Sunflower where we caught these sunsets every night. Not a bad way to end the day...
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| The view from Sunflower |
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| I saw this guy collecting his fishing nets during low tide |
The next day, more of the same. Another day of diving, with more cool people and some really great underwater sightings.
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| Dive guides and other divers in our group |
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| We saw several of these. They are a type of shrimp, but look almost like mini lobster tails. |
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| So many fishes |
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| Jellyfish! |
The fish & coral were fine, but the really cool stuff was this:
I got up close & personal with some Clark's Anemone Fish & a sea snake swam by
and then there was this:
Yep, that's a black tipped reef shark. We actually saw two of them, both far away. They were pretty big though and it was really cool to see them.
After finishing our diving, our plan was to spend a day back on Phi Phi Don, and then the following day take an evening trip out to Maya Bay for a night swim with the glowing plankton. So, we spent our evening wandering the island, checking things out. Phi Phi Don is an interesting place. On one hand, it is super touristy and filled with shops, restaurants, and other things geared towards tourists.
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| A typical street, filled with shops, restaurants, and tourists. |
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| There were Thai massage places everywhere |
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| Random person laying under the goods for sale. Seems about right. |
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| Best warning sign ever. |
But go just a bit off the beaten path and you see how locals live. It's very much developing country villages.
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| A small street where (we think) some locals live |
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| It's not home without a chicken! |
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| I sort of stumbled upon this boxing/Muai Thai ring. Not sure why that person is sitting there. |
All in all, it was very interesting to wander around and see the rest of the island. On our walk home, we noticed that the tide had really come back in and seemed to be much higher than normal. But, we didn't think much of it and called it a night.
The next morning, the tide was still quite high, but again, we didn't think much of it. That is until we got to the main pier to take our boat out to Maya Bay. It was then that we noticed several boats in the harbor seemed to have sunk, and there were a couple boats that had washed up on the shore and seemed to be damaged. Strange. Then, our boat to Maya Bay didn't show up on time. It turns out that the previous night wasn't just a high tide. It was a storm of some sort. The ocean was so rough and the tide was so high that it damaged a bunch of boats, and the seas were still so rough the next day that we couldn't go to Maya Bay. Bummer. We were really looking forward to the glowing plankton and we were definitely disappointed. But, we decided to make the best of it, and through the power of social media (Thanks Ondraya), we knew of a restaurant called Papaya that we had to find. So we asked around, and we were told it was "just near the yellow bank". We set off searching for said bank, and what do you know:
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| YELLOW BANK!!! |
Sure enough, Papaya was right around the corner.
We had been told two things about Papaya:
1. Their massaman curry is insanely good (it is)
2. They allow the cats in the restaurant to cool off in the refrigerator (they do)
Seriously, about halfway through our dinner, the owner opened up the fridge to get a drink, and let the cat hop in there to cool off for a bit. Sanitary? Sure what the heck. When in Rome....
That was pretty much it for our Thailand excursion. The next morning we caught the ferry back to Phuket (still very rough seas = not a fun ferry ride) and headed home.
I did get one last cool shot of the island as our plane flew over. With that, it was back to Indonesia and "reality".
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