Koh Phi Phi

After a week of trying to consolidate all of our things into two big backpacks, Brad and I are finally ready to take off on our adventure. But before we could get to the fun stuff, we had to move out of our apartment and say goodbye to our favorite old lady who cooks us dinner every night. Then we took the bus from Sisaket to Ubon Ratchathani one more time, as we made our way to the airport.

On our flight to Phuket, we found ourselves surrounded by four large Chinese tour groups. I swear that every person in their group was a minimum of 80 years old and they moved even more slowly than you could ever imagine. Then, since it took us probably close to an hour to get off the plane, we had to rush to grab our bags and catch a bus to the southern tip of Phuket. Here, we made our way to the hotel, where my friend Avery was anxiously awaiting our arrival.

Avery is a fellow South Dakotan who has spent the last few months in Africa, and has now made her way to Asia to explore Bali and Thailand. I’m sure glad the timing worked out for us to see each other over here, before she goes back to America for her med school interview (good luck)!

Anyways, since it was late when we got in, we just spent our first night catching up while enjoying a Chang (Thai beer). We then headed back to our hotel to get some sleep before our early morning ferry out to the island of Koh Phi Phi Don.

On the morning of our ferry ride, there was torrential down pours (typical since it is still rainy season). This weather made us pretty nervous that we would end up seasick from the waves, but it was surprisingly alright (unlike the ride back, but I’ll get to that later). Then, right as we were arriving, the rain stopped and it didn’t rain again until the ferry ride back. Somehow we lucked out and had the best weather!

During our time on the island, we spent the first day walking around and looking at all of the little shops, and then making our way up the viewpoint of the island. As you can see in the picture below, this view was definitely worth the hour of walking.

After soaking it all in, we found a different path to go down than the one we came up. This one simply involved stairs that led right down to the center of town, as opposed to the steep, windy road that we had come up. Either way, both paths involved a lot of sweat, and by the time we were down, we decided it was time to shower and get ready for dinner. We ended up going out and eating a calzone that was as long as a watermelon! Seriously, it was huge, and I thoroughly enjoyed each cheesy bite!

Now Koh Phi Phi is a bit of a party island, so there are bars around every corner. We had planned on skipping the nightlife, but I saw a cat hanging out in the bar and wandered in to pet it. The cat was super friendly and cuddled up in my lap, so we decided we better enjoy a drink while playing with this cat.

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On our second day on the island, Avery and I went out on an all day boat tour of the beaches around the island. We started by soaking in the sun on Bamboo Island. Here, it was like a little slice of heaven filled with velvet soft sand, the perfect amount of sunrays, and very few tourists.

After we left Bamboo Island, we headed out to a spot to snorkel. Now, I’m no expert on fish, but all I know is that there were a lot of them. They would swarm around you when you got in the water and swim close enough for you to touch them. We got to snorkel in two different spots throughout the day, and both times, we were surrounded by these small, brightly colored fish. There were also a few sea urchins and some coral to look at.

We then drove by Viking cove (pictured below) and past monkey beach (we unfortunately didn’t see any monkeys here) on our way to Maya Bay.

I found out that the beach at Maya Bay was used in the movie ‘The Beach’ starring Leonardo Dicaprio, so now all tourists seem to flock to see this beach. To get to the beach, we had to be dropped off on one side of the island and walk across to it because the waves were too big to get around to that side. Now getting there wasn’t just a hard thing for the boat driver to do, but also for us. On the side we got dropped off on, we had to climb up this swaying rope ladder/netting while fighting through the waves. We didn’t have our shoes, as we would have lost them in the water, so we had to walk barefoot across the rough terrain of the island.

Once we crossed the island, we completely forgot about our throbbing feet and were taken back by the breathtaking views. Take a look for yourself!

After Maya Bay, we finished up the boat tour by almost drowning. Okay, not really, but the winds had picked up and the waves were so crazy, that our little long-tail boat was taking on so much water. It’s two weeks later, and my eyes still hurt from all of the seawater that was sprayed into them. Nevertheless, the day was still amazing.

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For our last day in Koh Phi Phi, Brad and I got up early to take in the sunrise from the viewpoint (this time we were smart and walked up the stair instead of the long way). We then packed up and took the ferry back to mainland Phuket. Now as I mentioned above, this ferry was pretty rough. I’m not sure which was worse, the small long-tail boat or this ferry, but I think about ¼ of the passengers on the ferry got seasick. Thankfully, Brad, Avery, and myself were not part of that ¼!

We finally arrived back in Phuket and you can read about it in my next blog post!