Activity Summary
Saturday 24th September - Day 23
Travel from Phuket to Phi Phi Don
Beach afternoon at Loh Dalum beach
Viewpoints 1, 2 & 3
Reggae bar for Muay Thai fighting
Sunday 25th September - Day 24
Kayak to Monkey beach
Pool party at Ibiza hostel
Fire show on the beach
Monday 26th September - Day 25
Hungover at Loh Dalum beach
Luke starts to feel the effects of (assumed) gastroenteritis
Tuesday 27th September - Day 26
Cancelled couple snorkelling tour
Nicola solo snorkelling tour
Luke barely leaves the hotel room
Summary
After travelling central Thailand with the temples and the north with the nature and elephants we were pretty excited for a taste of that beach life. Phuket disappointed (as expected) so Phi Phi had all our hopes planted on it and it didn't disappoint.
The island is tiny and can walk around it in little to no time at all, which means eating and drinking is very straight forward as everything is compact (unlike much of the other parts of Thailand). There is also absolutely no stress of sorting out transport anywhere apart from more luxurious island beaches and the one on our doorstep (Loh Dalum) was sensational.
Very much a party island however and Luke very much regrets the big day out given his now 5 day stretch of not being 100%. [Luke: Nicola has been an absolute champ however in looking after me, making sure I had everything I needed and just kept herself entertained which given the full on nature of the previous weeks think was probably needed.] Luke is definitely not able to relive his 23 year old booze filled trip he did in Oz.
Great place and the only regret is Luke got wiped out for half of it.
Accommodation
Indigo Hotel - 4 nights - 800THB/n/p
The hotel was much nicer than Phuket so we were pretty happy with it. The only issue being that sand just got everywhere, but the hotel room could not be blamed for this.
The hotel was sort of in the back end of the line / square of bars and restaurant that would be associated with the party vibe of the island. Noise therefore did penetrate into the room but this was mainly from the absolute cretins that stayed at the hotel. The first night a group of morons were shouting round the hotel and playing music until another person told them to shut the F up at midnight to the retort of "we're going out anyway". There seemed to be a constant stream of drunken morons making noise each night so peace and quiet usually ensued at about 3am. Except the last night which had a drunken fool clearly locked out of their room with a passed out roommate not budging. The 30 minutes of door pounding wasn't much appreaciated.
Nowhere near as bad as a party hostel, but party islands do have their downsides and have decided to take this into consideration when booking accommodation in Ao Nang (Krabi) and staying well away from any "strip".
Travel
TO
Phuket hostel -> [Walk & Local cab, fortunately very easy] -> Rassada Pier -> [Ferry] -> Ao Ton Sao Pier -> [Walk, the island is tiny] -> Phi Phi Hotel
Diary
[Koh Phi Phi - written by Nicola with comments from Luke]
Nicola fresh from lack of sleep again (see Phuket) and Luke raring to get out of the chipwood potential fyrefest, set off pretty early by hailing a local cab. Grab did not work in the old town but fortunately there are a ton of taxi drivers, all of which have the same absolutely baffling sales tactic of asking you every time without fail "where are you going, taxi / Tuk Tuk" despite us clearly knowing that is their profession as they stand inside or next to their vehicle holding a sign and clearly utilising the wankery white collar business tactic of "don't ask, don't get" thinking it will suddenly change our minds. However it was pretty obvious in the morning this is what we were looking for as we slogged all our bags over to the first guys vehicle we could find.
Our mode of transport could have been either a larger ferry or much smaller speedboat so given Nicola's quite risky seasickness and the fact we just didn't trust Thai speedboats crashing around in the wet season seas, we settled on the risk averse 2h ferry from Phuket. It was comfortable enough experience until we approached Phi Phi Lay island (Phi Phi is a cluster of islands and this is the second largest and a nature reserve with no human inhabitants) where it got a little choppy and Nicola had to make a quick exit to the top deck for some fresh air and views to stabilise her sea sickness. This wasn’t a bad thing though as Luke joined quickly afterwards and we enjoyed the wobbly views of the limestone island, Maya bay (where The Beach was filmed and is now closed because it was subsequently trashed by tourists) and a couple of caves on that side of the island. In our heads that pretty much meant we'd completed the island minus any snorkelling.
We arrived in Phi Phi Don which is the main island and beach resort area in Phi Phi (said Pee Pee for all those that were wondering and found it incredibly hilarious like Luke did) but it was truly glorious as the sun shone on the lovely clear blue water and the expected change of pace to follow. Some of the island was in a state of chaos with them ripping up the paths and doing lots of building work. There are no roads on the island and everything is done on foot or by boat and we think because it’s off season and post covid the authorities are doing their best to regenerate the resort whilst it was quiet. That said, Koh Phi Phi is never quiet and it was packed with holiday makers and backpackers. It had a great vibe with so many restaurants, shops and bars.
We checked into our Hotel, Hotel Indigo (relative luxury compared to the dive of Phuket), and headed straight to the beach. Phi Phi is composed of two tall limestone islands with a sand bar (or isthmus) between the two where all the hotels and beaches are. The beach we headed to (Loh Dalum) was on the north of the spit and much quieter than the other beach with all the boats [Luke editor comment - you can really tell Nicola wrote this...].
We chilled in the sea for a while; Nicola collecting any litter that floated past but thankfully there wasn’t too much and the beach was pretty idyllic. After getting mildly sunburnt in only a few hours (probably because we ran straight into the warm lovely sea as soon as we arrived without suncream - woops) we headed back to the hotel to get changed and hike up to various viewpoints on the islands. The hike cost 30 baht per person but would have been more except a few of the viewpoints weren’t manned. Viewpoint 1 was weirdly touristy with odd statues of plastic strawberries (a theme in Thailand). Viewpoint 2 was packed with backpackers ready to watch the sunset but was pretty stunning over the island. We took our photos and decided to head up to viewpoint 3.
Viewpoint 3 was clearly off the beaten track as instead of a paved path we had to essentially follow a muddy gully uphill with various trip hazards. We spotted a few birds of paradise and thoroughly enjoyed the hike and sweat uphill. Upon arriving at viewpoint 3 it was much quieter and allowed for an enjoyable 20 mins watching the sun set below the sea to the west. Nicola wanted to leave pretty quickly as she didn’t want to attempt the ropey path in the dark (as she would 100% leave more of her knees behind) and so we headed down.
We headed for dinner and got a great and affordable Pad Thai before heading to a bar on the seafront and asking each other a list of random questions about each other to keep ourselves entertained until 9:30 - things like “What’s your favorite activity that we do together?” and “What’s another career that you think you would love?”- highly recommend it with a partner - we used this list: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/list-100-questions-ask-your-partner-date-nights.html
At 9:30 we headed to the Reggae Bar to watch some Muay Thai (Thai boxing). The idea of the bar is that stupid/drunk/ballsy travellers volunteer themselves to fight another traveller in a ring with a free bucket of alcohol as payment. Considering these buckets can be bought for £3, it's not really a particularly attractive fight purse. However the tame audience of mostly travellers with their other halves weren't up to volunteering. One massive American dude with arms like anacondas [Luke is leaving this in here because he found this description hilarious, if not very unusual] volunteered but everyone else upon seeing his arms shrank into the corners and he remained unchallenged. As such the professionals (Thai boxers) took over and we watched them fight for a bit with some pretty impressive head kicks. I’m pretty sure if we’d have waited to midnight more drunken idiots would have turned up to fight but we were tired and wanted a good nights sleep to be on form for the next day.
After some standard 7/11 cheese toasties and fruit for breakfast we headed to Loh Dalum beach again to rent a kayak. On the way we purchased some snorkels which turned out to be complete shite as expected and will be very quickly disposed of sadly. We rented the kayak for 2h initially (300 Baht) and headed off out into the bay to Monkey beach which was around the headland. The water was a wonderful shade of blue and pretty calm in the bay when paddling out so had no difficulty bar Luke deciding he was going to take this moment to do some morning exercise and try to demonstrate he still has some element of kayaking ability left after years out of the game. Turns out he's quite unfit but baby steps in the next 18 months right?
At monkey beach we tied our kayak to a buoy as we were too scared to moor on the beach with thieving monkeys around (a very good think in hindsight) and had a snorkel around. The snorkelling was fairly dull, exhasterbated by the shoddy equipment and the water had a fair current so after flopping like beached seals back into the kayak (successfully we may add) we tried to head across to the other side of the bay and out to sea.
We quickly realised that once unprotected by the headland the water was pretty choppy and not very fun to kayak in. The day wasn't particularly great for a romantic kayak and snorkel out to sea with grey clouds constantly looming and the wind pretty strong once unprotected, so we headed back feeling semi disappointed we couldn’t get further around the island. However Luke got to get another couple of power sprints in which made him feel better.
For lunch we thought it’d be a good idea to carb load and start pre drinking hence we got a chicken burger and pizza, and Nicola got a bucket of Strawberry Mojito. Feeling like we were about to burst we waddled away to get ready for the pool party. Nicola was already feeling tipsy by this point. 1 drink in and it was barely 2pm (she really has been drinking nothing all trip so far).
We headed to the pool party at around 3pm. It was semi busy and we proceeded to get a few buckets of rum and coke (300 baht) which Nicola didn’t really like but it was cheap and effing strong. People weren’t really drunk enough to make conversation with yet and were staying in groups so we headed off to play beer pong. An embarrassingly long game insued where the final cup was won by Luke walking up to and dropping the ball into the cup and mutual agreement that we couldn’t be fucked to play anymore. The most exciting moment during the game happened when Luke legged it over to the pool bar to start chugging spirits being free poured into mouths. Luke was chugging for a long time and the only reason they stopped was because they were going to run out of booze. These kids can't keep up.
By this time everyone else was drunk and many games of pool ball and chatting with randomers started. We chatted with a whole range of Dutch/Indian/ Israeli / Irish/ British people. Much dancing, much pooly ball, much drinking, much drunken conversation. Much fun.
At 9:30 the party ended and everyone spilled out onto the beach and we headed to the fire shows which consisted of:
Thai acrobats throwing fire about and juggling whilst doing crazy things
A fire skipping rope -we decided not to after a drunk guy before us fell on the rope
Playing with firework flares
Limbo for shots - Luke’s fortay although was far too drunk in this instance and therefore incredibly unbalanced
Plus so many other weird and dangerous things with fire. Nicola sobered up a bit by this point having not drunk since the pool party ended and sensibly opting for a sprite. Luke however was on one, ordering more beers and accepting all the free shots. He subsequently lost his flip flops and smashed his toe up, with Nicola coming to the rescue and buying him more flip flops at midnight and taking him home to bed. Luke maintains this is because Nicola didn't help him with the buckets and therefore he basically had 3/4 of the volume. The limbo shots really were not needed.
Hungover we stumbled to a restaurant for some chicken burgers and then to the beach to lie in the water and absolve our sins from the night before. We fully took advantage of the fact you could get decent enough western food here as a change from standard Thai. We booked a day boat trip for the next day and walked around town a little in the evening and sat at a beachfront bar. From here Luke started to go downhill…
We headed back and Luke had a night of fever, fever dreams, shits and general illness from a case of suspected gastroenteritis. How he got this, who knows but probably has something to do with dirty pool water, buckets of alcohol, grim people and shots. Fortunately he did not double himself.
We really did not do a lot.
Luke was clearly not in a state to do the boat trip so Nicola headed off to cancel them early morning and booked herself on the afternoon boat tour solo.
Nicola did her best getting cheese toasties and fruit for Luke but there wasn’t much to be done but let the illness run its course. Luke spent the day bedbound and running a fever and chills so basically veged out doing very little.
[Nicola's solo segment]
I headed off at 1:30 for the boat tour. The boat was a little traditional wooden boat with about 10 people on, 4 Irish holiday makers proved good company on the boat and we headed off to the next island nature reserve. Cue a pretty horrific crossing between the islands with the boat rocking an insane amount and me planning mentally how best to survive the boat capsizing. Arriving rather shaken at Phi Phi Ley nature reserve we visited some of the bays, limestone cliffs, caves and did a load of snorkelling which was great!
There were a huge variety of soft and hard corals and fish species including clown fish and parrot fish - however no sharks or turtles. Because of the weather we didn’t want to go to the north of the island and risk the waves so we spent ages on the south side snorkelling and moored up - this suited me greatly as I got loads of snorkelling time (1.5hs) but everyone else on the boat seemed pretty bored after snorkelling for 10 mins. (Side note- I thought about scuba diving the area as I'm qualified but at a cost of £70 couldn't justify it - either way the snorkelling was great and didn't feel like I'd missed out not diving it)
At about 5:30 the boat headed back. The waves were still pretty bad but not as bad on the return. In the middle of this wave hell hole area was supposed to be the sunset spot, but with sunset an hour away and most people looking green we all wanted the shelter of the bay and so headed for monkey beach. Advice to anyone visiting areas with monkeys - don’t bring food. Some kayakers arrived and they were attacked and mobbed for their food where one of the girls ran, tripped and smashed into a rock. Monkeys are just cheeky aggressive little fuckers from my experience and best avoided.
After that we headed home 1.5h early because of the weather. It was a mixed trip and if I hadn’t had loads of snorkelling it would have been a lot less enjoyable. Most others seemed very underwhelmed by it all.
[Nicola segment out]
The rejoining of Luke and Nicola was pretty uneventful as he managed to make it out once during the day to get some food and water, to then do so again for dinner but quickly run home feeling uncomfortable.
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