Ko Phi Phi Thailand

I've been so blessed to be able to travel to some beautiful places in the world, but I think yesterday's trip to the islands off of Phuket just took the cake for the most beautiful place. That combined with how genuinely friendly, nice and helpful the Thais are, makes Phuket one of the best places I've traveled to ever!

I thought I could navigate us to the port so we could take a ferry to Ko Phi Phi (Islands about 42km from Phuket's East coast), but I overestimated my capabilities to figure out just exactly which port we should be heading to, and what company's ferry we were looking for. I got the departure times from the hotel and I thought I had the ferry company's name, but we ended up just stopping and and asking someone directions. Luckily the locals are super helpful and we were up early, so we had some time to spare. We ended up following a woman on a moped to Chalong port, and after talking with some folks, we ended up settling on a speed boat tour of the islands (with Anda Varee tours) which included lunch and snorkeling for 1500 baht each (about $50 USD each).

Speedboats ready to take off for the islands

A little more than I thought we would spend for our original plan to take a ferry to the islands, but this was an all day tour, and it was sooo worth it!

We left around 9:30, and it took about an hour to get to our first stop, Maya Bay, at Ko Phi Phi Lae. They filmed part of "The Beach" here, and you can see from the photos how beautiful this beach is!

Maya Bay at Ko Phi Phi Lae

Next stop was Loh Samah Bay for snorkeling. Kris went and said the water was a little cloudy and couldn't see much. I passed to stay with our belongings. We didn't plan to exactly do this tour, so we had a few cell phones we probably shouldn't have brought.

Ko Phi Phi

We went through Pilleh Cove, where the water got very shallow and was a beautiful blue green turquoise color, and then we went on to Viking cave. There is a type of bird that makes these nests I think from saliva? They are thought to have medicinal properties by the Chinese, and they are expensive. Because of this, the nests are protected, and in this Viking cave where they are plentiful, they have security guards on watch, and no tourists are allowed to visit the cave.

Monkey beach was the next stop. I really liked our guide because he was so in touch with the nature. He disapproved of feeding the Monkeys on Monkey island, because they are starting to rely only on human tourists for their food. They now bite tourists and now after generations of tourists feeding them, they are starting to have a have a hard time finding their own food. He also disapproved of feeding the fish bread, because the bread gets caught in the corals and then the fish start to attack the corals to get the bread, destroying the reefs.

We took a lunch break at Ton sai Bay on Ko Phi Phi Don, which is the largest of the Phi Phi Island group.

Drinking out of a coconut

Then we traveled about a half hour to Ko Khai Nai, which was a tiny little island. Kris grabbed a beer and I had a coconut cocktail (fresh pineapple and coconut cut up with a machete right there!) and we swam for a while in the beautiful water. The beach had some large rocks in some places, and Kris decided to climb one in particular, and was met with the force of mother nature. The rock was sharp, and Kris had a few gashes, one in particular that was gushing blood all over. Luckily our guide had some bandages and there was another person on the trip with a similar rock cut that had to be attended to. When we got back to the hotel, we got Kris fixed up a little better by the resort nurse.

Kris on the rock where he cut his foot

Kris' cut foot

Somehow we picked the perfect day to go on the island tour. It was sunny the whole time except for about 15 minutes of rain. I did get a tid bit of sunburn on my shoulders despite my SPF 30. I think I should have reapplied after all the swimming.

So today, between my slight sunburn and Kris now impaired foot, we decided to lay low. We checked out Patong beach area where we got a few souvenirs and met an Australian couple, and I had time to hit the gym. And yes, mom, another post card for you that we mailed out today :) We also met another interesting few people in the Hyatt club where we turned the hours-devours into dinner. I also finally learned how to say hello and thank-you in Thai a bit more properly.

Tonight we took delivery of the 45kg big Buddha that Kris liked at the shop in Phuket Town called Hi.So. It's too heavy, so we'll need to figure out how to ship it tomorrow before we leave for Bangkok.

written by

blondie on June 10, 2012 from Ko Phi Phi, Thailand

from the travel blog: Asian Persuasion - June 2012

tagged Thailand and Phuket

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Sounds beautiful -- and a great continuation of your adventure. Jon and I have actually eaten the birds' nests you are talking about here. One of our Chinese grad student friends -- Tom Tam -- made birds nest soup for us. His father was a Chinese delicacy exporter. The nexts in the soup were very small, and gelatinous -- Love you, MOM

written by MOM on June 11, 2012

Superb, I am making a new site almost like Wikipedia and your articles would really fit in well. Would you let me link back to your website?

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