Sun, Sea and Snorks

Getting from A to B in Asia has finally become something I look forward to. We jump aboard boats of varying size and safety standards and head straight to the front, lean back, hang our legs over the side and start singing “her name was Rio and she dances…etc….etc.” People look at us a little funny but we don’t care - ‘we’re on our holidays!!’

The pace of our trip has slowed right down and although the prices have gone right up, we spent so little of our budget in the first three months that we ain’t gonna complain at paying closer to a tenner for a room, if that room is a detached wooden bungalow overlooking the crystal clear waters of Phi Phi Island - about 1 hour by boat from Ao Nang and the next stop on our trip.

Going up in the world

60 rickety steps up from the southern tip of Long Beach (Hat Yao) is the Phi Phi Hill Resort. The woman at the bottom informs us they have rooms so I leave Carla and our worldly possessions behind and clamber up to do a recky. I am greeted at the top by a cold glass of water and an amazing view of the turquoise bay and outlying islands. A bungalow on the ‘sunrise’ side of the ‘resort’ gives us a large veranda overlooking the ocean and refreshing cold water shower, all for 650 baht. Carla is radioed on the beach to come up, although the bags go via a pulley cart, thank god! And we both settle in before toasting the view and the finding of a place under budget after all the touts at the pier telling us we’d never get anywhere under 1000 baht during peak season.

The next few days are spent doing very little except:

• Discovering Phi Phi has no roads whatsoever and that with no ATMs on Long Beach we trek to the main resort area (Ton Sai) along 4 beaches and 3 rocky outcrops to avoid the 4 quid there and back boat trip.
  
  
• Meeting another great South East Asian character - ‘Gurrah’ - who runs Relaxed Bar, its 4 plastic tables and a keg of Chang Beer under a lightbulb on the beach. We befriend Gurrah, whose family still live in Burma and always tell him we will be
  
  In Thailand not only pensioners live in Bungalows
  We celebrate our first stay in one place for 7 days (ok it looks like a porta-cabin on stilts but we called it home)
  back later in the evening for more drinks only to walk down our 60 stairs to find he has always packed up. Although he apologises with a huge smile the following day we rename his place ‘A little too relaxed bar”.
  
  
• Doing the mammoth trek to the viewpoint 186 metres above sea level and having ‘ a nice cup of tea’ at the top whilst enjoying the views and tranquility of a spot that is really worth the climb.
  
  
• Waking up at 6.30am to watch the sunrise from our veranda and then seeing a family of 5 monkeys go through our bins, sharing a leftover Twix and washing it down with the dregs of a can of Singha.
  

SNORKS!!!!!!!

Day 4 we head off on a long tailed boat trip around the outlying islands which allows us to spend most of the day participating in Carla’s new found favourite hobby of snorkeling (or snorks as she calls it). By this stage Carla is such a pro that she even has her own mask and all the practice she has had in Ao Nang and on the beach by the hotel comes into good use on the three fantastic coral sites we stop at. It really is a different world and in the slightly deeper water (20-30ft) the amount of fish is amazing, so many different sizes and colours, all lit up by the bright rays of sunshine beaming down into the crystal clear waters. It’s breathtaking, yet another highlight of the whole trip.

After lunch on Monkey Beach we head off to Phi Phi Don's sister island, Phi Phi Ley. Phi Phi Ley is spectacular, unlike Phi Phi Don which slopes into the sea, Phi Phi Ley juts out at amazing angles and looms over you as you approach. The uninhabited island is all cliffs and caves and its only beach is in a large bay which cuts into the island (Maya Bay), but this is the areas most famous attraction and the setting for the film based on Alex Garland’s novel ‘The Beach’.
Like most 'natural' film sets it’s a bit of a let down - beautiful but so much smaller than it seems on film, there is also a 200 baht ‘entrance fee' which we had been told we would avoid by dropping anchor 20 metres from shore and swimming in. Now, unless my sense of distance is wrong then 20 metres in Thailand is more like 400 metres back home and as the ‘captain’ (the boat only holds 8 people) couldn’t speak a word of English we were resigned to missing out. That was until a Swedish couple we were with said they were going to swim for it and I decided that me and Carla should follow.
Now bearing in mind that he was built like a circa 1983 Duncan Goodhew and she had flippers on we did extremely well to make it just lagging a little behind and after a short walk along ‘The Beach’ we gathered sufficient breath to head back arriving at our boat with hardly enough strength to pull ourselves aboard.
It was a fantastic day, only soured by our love of 80’s pop videos making us spend the entire trip exposed at the very front of the boat and leading to the inevitable sunburn and bright red faces.

Our stay at Phi Phi Hill has been the longest since we left the UK, a whole 7 days of sun, sea, snorkeling and cold showers (now we really are chilled2thecore. )
Our final few days are no different, I read a couple of books and write a couple of songs whilst Carla snorkels and grows gills.

and when we realise the resort staff are treating us like one of the family we know it’s time to move on - reluctantly.

Next stop Koh Lanta.

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