The beach from "The Beach"
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
161
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Ko Phi Phi,
Thailand
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Our second day on the island we signed up for a longtail boat tour. A bunch of us piled into the rickety craft and met our "guide" for the day. He had one tooth and was almost completely unintelligible. It was kind of funny.
The first stop on the tour was Shark Point, a snorkelling spot right off the beach we were staying on. Although coral was rather lacking, there was no shortage of colorful fish. No sharks, but we did see mean looking needlefish and some clownfish. Erin found a weird seastar.
Afterwards we made the long trip around Phi Phi Don, stopping at Bamboo Island. This is a tiny, round bump of an island off the coast of Phi Phi. It has a beautiful white beach and a small fisherman's village of bamboo huts. We were left here to have lunch (fried rice...again). Erin parked herself and read a book while I explored around the curve of the beach. I found some rockpools with fish and crabs, and watched herons grabbing schooling fish from the water.
Ferried on a cruise boat
From here we continued around to Monkey Beach. For some reason our guide didn't seem to think there were monkeys on Monkey Beach, but we did see some. Erin also went snorkelling in the clear but shallow water.
Our last stop was Phi Phi Le. It has forbidding rockwalls that rise out of the sea. But as you circle around the island, you can see a break in the wall appear. If you enter here, you find yourself in the famous Maya Bay. Maya Bay contains a beautiful, unspoilt beach encircled by beautiful green walls. For those of you who've seen the movie, "The Beach," with good ole' DiCaprio, this is where it was shot. I haven't seen the movie, but I had picked up the book in Bangkok. It was interesting to read and then see this place. We had taken the afternoon tour and there were only a few boats in the bay. Another day we saw it in the morning, and it was packed.
From Maya Beach we circled around to another inlet with beautiful, clear water. Here we had another opportunity for snorkelling. Our boat man threw scraps in the water and we jumped into the middle of a horde of sargeant majors. The sealife here was amazing. Around the corner we found a lionfish, and right under it a black and white banded seasnake. I hung around to watch the lionfish, which would blunder over to face a school of silvery fish. They would always move out of its gaze, and it would turn in a lumbering fashion to face its enemy. We had to leave that place too soon.
On the way back we stopped at Viking Cave, which is where the swiftlet nests are collected to make soup. This bird-spit soup is a delicacy and fetches hundreds of dollars per nest. It is the reason Maya Beach doesn't have a resort on it: swiftlet nests are more profitable than tourists. Quite impressive really.
We were on a sunset tour but dark clouds ruined our happy ending. We puttered back to Ton Sai Bay and walked back to our little slice of paradise.
~Travis
Comments
I like the boats
& miss you guys.
love.