January 8
We finally arrived in Koh Phi Phi Don after our long joinery from Koh Tao. The island is very small and everything is walking distance. They don’t even have cars or taxis here at all. It’s like a five to ten minute walk to get anywhere. Our guesthouse is in the middle of everything. It is run by a strict older woman who takes no shit from anyone and if you piss her off, she just won’t let you stay there. Unluckily for us, she couldn’t find our reservation in her books and she was fully booked. I kept showing her the conformation and had to pull it up on her computer but she was confused. Eventually, she realized that she checked someone else in under my name, so she just gave us the other person’s room. Our room was nice. It was like a hotel room with a little balcony over one of the main streets. When you enter most buildings here, you need to take off your saddles and leave them outside. Nobody wears shoes unless they are doing something that requires them. My sandals haven’t gotten stollen yet so I guess it’s fine. We dropped our stuff off and headed to the beach. On the way, we walked the streets of the small town and got some pizza that seemed to be a trend here. It was American style and really big. I liked it. We went to the beach and relaxed for the day. After napping on these chairs for like an hour, we decided to hike up to the viewpoint of the island. We hiked up a hill that was all stairs. It was tiring but worth it. The view was great. You could see the whole town and how small it really was. You can also see evidence of the tsunami that devastated the island ten years ago. We then went back home to shower and get ready for the night. We walked around the side of the island that we haven’t seen yet and that was more chill restaurants and shopping. We then walked back into the area that was more bars, small clubs and had a fun nightlife. We are dinner and then went into a large reggae bar that had a boxing ring in the middle. We ended up staying here all night because it was so entertaining. Drunk tourists can volunteer to fight another tourist and in exchange, then both get a free bucket of alcohol (a $5 value). This was legit fighting too. This is Muay Thai boxing. You can hit with fists, elbows, knees and feet. It is very intense and very painful. It was funny to watch people with no fighting experience trying to kick each other’s ass though. Most people who went in had huge egos so it was fun to watch them get crushed. There were two sets of girls who even fought. One girl messed up her knee and one guy definitely broke his rib. Nothing else happened though, surprisingly, unless the person just didn’t show it because of adrenaline. Most of the people didn’t even want the free drink after because they were so sore. It was a solid night out in the little town. We then walked to the beach and it looked like Haad Rin for the full moon party. We would do the beach scene the next night. We went to bed for now after a successful day and night.
January 9
We woke up around 9:30 AM on our own and went to the beach. We chilled out for a little but it was too hot too be in the sun for too long so we walked around the town. It really isn’t that big so we walked the entire thing. This is one of our favorite towns because it is definitely the calmest so far since no motor vehicles are here at all. It’s all walking with a couple of bicycles. At 2:00 PM we had to wait outside our hostel to be picked up by a guy who was a part of a tour that we signed up for. We walked with him to meet up with a bunch of other people who were on our same trip. We were going to the famous beach on Koh Phi Phi Ley, which is Koh Phi Phi Don’s smaller sister island. There are no hotels or anything there. It is too small for any of that and is protected as a national park now. The beach is well knows from pictures and from the movie The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio. On our way there, we were going to do other fun things too, which is how these tours usually go. We jammed into a long boat and started our tour. Our group was pretty cool and were from all over the world. We had people from Australia, Finland, England, Ireland, Germany, and a few others. Our first stop was Monkey Beach. We were allowed off of the boat and walked around the beach with monkeys everywhere. They seem to be spoiled by tourists. They are all fat from all of the free bananas that tourists give them. They even refuse bananas from people. Also, they drink fanta and coke out of cans. They refuse any other drink. I’m pretty sure they are addicted to caffeine. Our next stop was a cliff on the edge of Koh Phi Phi Don. We each got a pair of rubber shoes because the rock was sharp limestone that we had to climb in order to get to the jumping cliff. The cliff had a couple if different heights you can jump from. I have done 20 meters before and I will never do it again. It is so scary and it hurts. Matt and I decided to jump off the cliff that was about 8-12 meters high. It was fun so I went back up a second time. When I jump off cliffs, I tend to always do the same flying squirrel looking pose. It is a good pose to keep my balance and it works out because it always makes pictures look sweet too. After cliff jumping, we rode past some cave with almost extinct birds in it. It’s the last place where the birds live naturally so if you trespass, then apparently fire one warning shot, then shoot you if you don’t stop coming in. We them rode into this sick waterway that had high mountains all around us. We swam there for a half hour. It was awesome and was probably the coolest place I have even swam. We then rode a little further and went snorkeling for a little bit. We looked for sharks but couldn’t find any. We did see a huge eel though and a ton of fish and coral. Our next stop was the stop that we were all waiting for. It was the beach in Maya Bay on Koh Phi Phi Ley. It was so nice. It had huge rocks on all sides and was so secluded. It is only accessible by boat and was very hidden from the outside we hung out on that beach for an hour and all got the classic picture if longboats with the rocks in the background. We ate sandwiches while sitting in the sand and absorbing the stunning beauty of this naturally created perfect beach paradise. If the USA ever takes over Thailand, I call first dibs, no blitz. I would make the island better by letting people see those extinct birds without getting shot at. We left Maya Bay a little before sunset so we could see the sky turn different colors as the sun went down. It was great. Once it was dark, we rode to Monkey Beach again but stayed out in the water. We them jumped it and swam with glowing plankton. The plankton didn’t light up like the picture in the brochure made it seem but when you are in the water and you move your arms, all of the plankton did make little bright blue lights. It was pretty neat and kind of creepy to know they were all around me. The boat driver said they don’t sting of anything but I’m calling bull shit on that because I felt a couple of buzzes and some other guy in our boat had a rash on his back. The tour then came to an end and we got let off on Koh Phi Phi Don to walk back to our hostel. This was a great tour and was one of the cheapest yet since it was by long boat. Once back at our hostel, we showered and them headed out. We ate dinner and then hit the beach. I kind of wanted to go back to that Thai tourist boxing bar but I wanted to see more of the nightlife here. We hung out on the beach all night. It was great. It was similar to that of the Full Moon Party Beach. We hung out at a bar called Woodys because they had the best music. It was great songs that we love with a dancing twist to it. Also, that bar had really good fire performers and fire games. The other three bars on the beach were Slinkys, Ibiza, and Toned. They were all similar but played slightly different music. I did the fire limbo and jumped through a ring of fire. Some kids are so stupid. People jumped head first through the ring of fire and smashed their face on wood or on the sand when they came down. What the hell did they expect? Did they think that gravity wouldn’t exist if they went through this fire hole? It’s not a worm hole people. I just jumped through by bringing my knees to my chest and then landing on my feet. I felt like a circus freak though because everyone else was hurting themselves. This must be why everyone here has bandages all over their legs and bodies. Matt and I had a bucket each then got another to split, which was very cheap because it was locally made rum. We now know why it was so cheap. I thought alcohol would be fine anywhere because if it’s greater than 20% alcohol content, the alcohol should kill all bacteria, right? Well this was 40% alcohol and I puked my brains out for the entire next day. And we found out after that this happens to most people who drink that alcohol. I have no idea why. We got drunk and called it a night. We had to wake up early to catch a ferry to Phuket for three days, then onward to Bangkok, then Myanmar.
