The Beach
Trip Start
May 03, 2008
1
21
47
Trip End
May 02, 2009
Koh Phi Phi,
Thailand
Sunday, July 6, 2008
We arrived to Koh Phi Phi to more rain and were greeted by a guy or a girl not entirely sure which is not unusual in Thailand. There are no roads on Phi Phi, indeed no cars so people walk or cycle along pathways. The "person" loaded our bags on a back of a cart and then we trudged through the village to where we were staying which was on top of a hill overlooking the village. The brochure had painted it as an idyllic mountain top bamboo lodge not mentioning it was near a water treatment plant (smelt lovely as you walked past) and the fact that we had a toilet in our room albeit with a thin half wall breaking up the room (it didn't stop the smell). Unfortunately we'd paid for a second night and the running water stopped so we couldn't even flush the toilet possibly due to the torrential rain outside. We moved out the next day.
Still raining, we went in search of better more suitable accommodation and after a bit of a search found PP Princess Beach Resort. A little bit pricey at twelve Euro a night (but still cheaper than the toilet place), it was situated right beside the beach and also on the outskirts of the village. We had luxuries such as air con and a TV as well in the room!
Now settled in and with the rain finally stopped a couple of days later, we settled in amongst the ex pat locals and even found ourselves a local, a sports bar nearby run by an English guy and a guy from the north. There we met another couple from the north who also live on the island and they offered to show us the best snorkel points of Phi Phi. Between six of us we rented a long tail boat for the day and went to various points on the island to snorkel, one of them being shark point where unfortunately I only managed to see one shark for a split second. I've never seen an animal move so fast, the sharks in the area are small and are therefore wary of humans and this one once it saw us shot off like an arrow through the water. There were lots of different fish to view though and they swam all around us which were fascinating. Figured out that if you blow bubbles when you take out your snorkel they must think they're getting fed or something, so they come up to the surface where the bubbles are i.e. right beside your face. Also later that day in the boat we visited some random Thai guy in the middle of nowhere who lives there and sat on the beach right beside his shack. Also randomly what he seems to do all day is practice walking a tightrope where he tried a rope between two trees. Anything goes in Thailand..
I decided to brave the depths of the ocean and learn to scuba dive. After only learning to swim about six months previously the experience was pretty terrifying. We took the PADI scuba course which included two dives of depths of ten metres. On the first day we trudged through the village with our scuba gear on (heavy oxygen tanks and all) to the beach and the shallow waters to practice breathing under the water. Breathing is easy enough some of the other tasks you have to pass are a bit more tricky including taking off the face mask under water keeping it off for a minute and then putting it back on and also taking your mouth piece out of your mouth and throwing it away before retrieving it and then putting it back in your mouth so you can breath again. These were the easy parts though as we had to do the dives early the next day.
We got up the next morning and it was... raining again, that's a surprise. We weren't fully sure we'd actually go out the rain was so bad until we got down to the dive shop and they said no problem weather somehow doesn't matter when your diving. We went out on the rough seas and soon Marie Therese started to feel unwell, but once we got into the water she felt better as underwater you don't feel the currents. Underwater it was amazing and terrifying at the same time, on our first dive we had a giant turtle eating the coral directly beside us. I found the diving hard going and it was hard to get neutral buoyancy which means not sinking or floating to the surface. Indeed on the second dive I hurt my eardrum a bit as I descended too fast without equalising my ears enough, it hurts a lot. We went through most of the same tasks as we had to complete the day before including a new one where we had to do press-ups on the sea bed by breathing in a certain way.
When we got back to surface though we both started to feel unwell. Marie Therese was sick and I though I wasn't going to able to do the second dive as I felt that bad but braved it in the end and jumped in. Maybe it was the fact that I was underwater or that I had to concentrate on not dying but I felt better soon enough. However after about forty five minutes Marie Therese started to feel bad again and she had to ascend to the surface to throw up right beside a bemused and probably surprised Thai fisherman in his boat. Somewhat delightfully the fish also view this as food as well, who said fish have feelings? That maybe so but they definitely don't have taste buds.
After the stress of diving we chilled out on the sandy beaches for a few days until the second last day where we took a sunset cruise to Koh Phi Phi Ley which is a the small neighbouring island where the film, the beach was filmed. The cove the beach was in was beautiful though the tide was out so it wasn't suitable for swimming. Back out on the boat we went out to sea again and watched a beautiful sunset.
Unfortunately our time was up on Phi Phi and due to awkward ferry times meant (like they didn't sail that month) so we had to go to Phuket next.
