Day 2: Phi Phi Island

Monday was our first excursion of the week. We chose to go to Phi Phi Island first. It's pronounced "pee-pee," hahaha. It's good we got that one out of the way, because it was the longest and most exhausting. We were supposed to be picked up at 6:40am, but the driver was late, having been picking up people from other hotels. We left at 7:00. The hotel was good enough to provide us with box breakfasts, since breakfast at the restaurant didn't start until 8. We each got a ham and cheese sandwich, a banana, a green orange, an apple, a can of pineapple juice, and a can of coffee. Not bad.

We would get on the ol' speedboat at Phuket, so it was almost two hours in the van with some other foreigners. I slept a lot. Early, you know. Once at Phuket, we were stickered with a boat number, as there were quite a few other tourists from various destinations going out. Once out, we saw tons of other boats on the same excursion. I was surprised to see as many tourists as we did, with how few we had seen so far. But evidently Phuket fills up more than the outskirts.

It was kind of a whirlwind tour. We rode in the boat, Carpe Diem, for 45 minutes, drinking water from sealed plastic cups with straws and listened to our guide, Pom, give us the itinerary. He later had to change the itinerary, though. Doesn't matter. I didn't remember any of it anyway.



I don't remember the order of everything, but we visited the larger and smaller Phi Phi island, a monkey beach, and a lagoon, which we couldn't enter because the tide was too low. We went snorkeling for about a half hour at one point (Don't step on the coral. Don't break my heart, Pom kept saying). I've been snorkeling a couple times before, but I always have trouble reconciling breathing underwater. I got used to it after about 15 minutes, though, and started to do a little better. I still can't really go underwater with the snorkel, though. I tried, and couldn't even get down a few feet hardly before I flipped out a bit. Ever since I got contact lenses 14 years ago, I haven't really gone under water for fear of losing them, so I've lost the ability to deal with it, and I've lost the lung capacity. Too bad. Just surface snorkeling for me.

We spent ten minutes at the monkey beach, and spent twenty minutes, I think, at the smaller Phi Phi Island, Phi Phi Ley, which was a filming site for Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Beach."

Here it is:



Here's a monkey at monkey beach. I took a million photos, but I dumped them all from my disk onto Kent's laptop and haven't gotten any but these from him.


We were told adamantly to stay two or three meters away from the monkeys, as they're aggressive and moody. This guy very stupidly let one of the monkeys climb up onto him. A few seconds after this photo was taken, a bunch of other monkeys came around him, and something happened to upset the one on his back, which then attacked the guy, and he had to throw it off him and run away. Right after that a Korean chick got scratched on the leg, as she was heading back toward the boat.

Speaking of that Korean chick, she and her boyfriend were on our boat. I first saw her at the dock in Phuket. I was looking down at the ground and saw a set of high heels. I thought, only a Korean would wear high heels on a boat and beach trip. Sure enough. I saw the couple on the boat, with a man I thought was one of the crew at first. I figured he could just speak Korean, since there are many Korean tourists in Thailand, probably. After seeing him cater to their every whim for a bit, I realized he was with them, but clearly not on the same level. Then when I saw him taking all these glamour shots of them all over the place on every island we went to, I figured he must be a hired photographer. I was so embarrassed. Koreans are ridiculous.

Anyway, back to MY story. As I was taking video of some monkeys getting chased away from this guy's canoe and playing with his oar (not a euphemism), one of the monkeys decided to walk very fast toward me. I had to back up quickly to avoid him. It was a funny and nervous moment, because those monkeys'll getcha.

Here's a link to the video I was taking:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2HZ9JRPTkY8

Kent also happened to be taking video of the same thing on his camera, so he caught the whole thing from another viewpoint. As you can see, the monkey wasn't really coming at me very fast.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qyUC80xnTJg

We saw quite a few staggering rock islands like these while speeding around:


Just look at that water.


At some point we stopped at an island for lunch, where there was a buffet. It was pretty good. We walked around to look at the shops a bit, but didn't buy anything. I figured a location that was only frequented by tourists on the middle of an excursion was probably going to charge the most money ever for their stuff. Our guide had to leave the island to take a couple people to the hospital during lunch, so we left without him. A little while later we met back up with him on another boat, and he made jokes about someone stealing his boat. Har, har.

Here's the other Phi Phi Island, where we stayed for two hours. We brought snorkels, but didn't end up using them. The water was wicked warm. We walked around the tip of the rocks, there, and ended up finding a little cave in the rocks. It was cool. We couldn't take a picture because getting a camera over there would have been risky, the water being so deep.


The beach was filled with umbrellas and chairs, as you can see, but you had to pay to use them, so screw that. Pom said the vendors that were lined up along the beacher further up were all residents of other islands who set up camp each morning, and leave with all their stuff once all the tourists are gone. Come 4:30 the island is deserted.



After our time was up, it was only a 15 minute ride back to Phuket, and a tiring trip back to Phang-Nga. We got back to the hotel at 6:30, and 11 1/2 hour day. I slept like a log that night.