Snorkelling, beach and babes

Trip Start Jun 03, 2008
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Trip End Sep 22, 2008


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Flag of Thailand  ,
Thursday, August 28, 2008

I figured I had to visit a touristy beach place while I was there. Ko Phi Phi is a group of islands in southern Thailand, in between Phuket and Krabi. The speedboat was only an hour away, and the day trip included visiting three islands, snorkelling, food and drink. First stop was Maya Bay - nice from far, but far from nice! Famous for being where some of 'The Beach' was filmed, (which is a decent film actually), it's all Leonardo Di Caprio's fault that this hidden paradise is not hidden any longer and features way too many tourists, quite spoiling the point of it. None of the tourists seemed to venture the rest of the island though, so it was cool exploring a little, but the main beach was just too packed and ruined the scenery... and this is meant to be low season!
Next stop was some kind of viking cave thing, which apparently had historic picutures carved into it or something like that, wasn't terribly interesting. Monkey beach was up next, which was just a group of boats up by the trees feeding sea monkeys bananas phiphi
phiphi
 . The monkeys were quite cool, bit different from other monkeys I've seen.. though obviously used to humans and being a tourist attraction - though I can't blame them - why would you ever turn down free food?
 
The boat stopped in some random place where we could do some snorkelling. It was quite deep and there were loads of fish about - especially because people were feeding them bread (again why turn down free food!) It was ok, but only really saw one type green coloured fish. Somewhere round there was meant to be where one of the scenes from one of the James Bond films was filmed.
 
The main island, Phi Phi Don, was where we stopped for lunch. It was a buffet - with some really good seafood, chicken and a good variety. Walked around that island a bit.. reminded me of Peru, it was stall after stall of souvenir shops and tour agencies. It was a nice place though, clear water with sandy beaches.
 
We stayed 2 hours at Khai Island, the next one, and thank god they saved the best till last. It was a small little island, lots of sand and coral. There wasn't many tourists around and it was just beautiful how it was surrounded by open water... and since it wasn't big at all, it hasn't been spoiled by tourist shops or modern spas, just a few huts that sold drinks. Did some swimming, which was cool as schools of fish would go by as you swim and you can see them since the water is so clear. Only thing was that the floor was full of shells and corals, which my feet didn't appreciate. Snorkelled around the corals a bit, and that was cool.. seeing different types of fish and just in their natural habitat, eating off algae on the rocks.
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