Marissa and I arrived in Koh Phi Phi on Thursday and experienced culture shock. We went from the idyllic beaches of Hat Ton Sai, to here, which is something like Daytona Beach at Spring Break. This place is so overrun with tourists, I was tempted to jump on the next ferry out. However we stayed for a couple nights, and the island did redeem itself.
Yesterday we went on a day-long boat tour of the area. Koh Phi Phi is actually two islands, Phi Phi Don, where everyone stays, and Phi Phi Lei, which is a nature reserve and not populated. There's also a sprinkling of smaller islands all around.
The views of the beaches and coral and limestone cliffs are amazing. The boat tour stopped at about 7 sites, and we snorkelled at most of them. One of the stops was at Maya Bay, which is the beach setting for the movie The Beach. It was the only crowded stop, otherwise it felt like we were the only tourists. At one snorkeling site, Marissa and I saw a whale shark about 7 feet long!! That was pretty lucky of us (it was Marissa that saw it first). ...I took a million pictures, half of them of the limestone cliffs and emerald waters in the background with a long-tailed boat as the subject. We were lucky with the weather -- it was sunny with blue skies the whole day, and only rained in the evening. Every other day we've been here, there's been passing storms.
After the tour, we went for a Thai massage. Ate dinner at a more local spot, and then went to a bar that had a cover band. They were amazing, and had a pretty big repetoire, they even played Chop Suey by System of a Down! When I'm playing guitar, I usually only have 4-5 songs memorized at any time; when I learn a new one, the oldest one drops out of memory.
I'm going to try to take a cooking class while I'm here. I've seen them offered at a couple places -- they start by taking you to the market to show you what the ingredients look like!
Right now we're waiting for the ferry to take us back to the mainland, but to Phuket. We'll have a day there, and then fly to Siem Reap on Monday to see Angkor Wat.
ps. I've changed the settings on my blog to allow anonymous comments -- so you don't need to sign up for an account to leave a comment.
Hi Eric....this is a terrific travel journal....it's the first thing I check every morning when I get to work. Really look forward to your descriptions and now to your photos also. Can't wait to hear about Angkor Wat.
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