So anyway, after 60 hours of traveling on plane, another plane, 12-hr overnight bus (omg no sleep), and ferry, I was finally on the island of Koh Phi Phi. So far the plan is to spend the entirety of my trip on several islands, to chill the fuck out, eat good food, and dive.
I hadn't brushed my teeth or pooped in who knows how long, so I cleaned myself and took a half day to lie in my bed(!) until all the energy came back into my body, and my phone.
There are 3 viewpoints as you hike up the trail, it was quite a tiring hike!
But the view was phenomenal. Here are pictures from all 3 viewpoints, in sequential order. I stayed a while after getting to the 3rd hike to see the sunset. It was breathtaking :)
Also I thought it was really cool that you could very obviously see the low tide - all the boats are just chilling in the sand at this point!!!
I also liked this:
After that I turned in pretty early - been an exhausting trip, had to charge up! I'll spare you the hostel shenanigans but good sleep was not possible that night :(
Anyway, the next morning my new friend, Sam from the hostel, and I set out to find a water taxi to take us to some cool places around Phi Phi
First things first though - Thai fruit pancakes for breakfast! I got the mango - One of the best breakfasts I've had:
It being such a touristy island, we had no problems getting stopped by locals offering water taxi services. One guy was especially nice, seemed genuine, and offered a good price. So we got on his beautiful boat:
Yadi, our driver, was an extremely nice man. I got to know him over the 3 hours we were together. I found out that he used to be a scuba divemaster, but on one excursion he was leading, they saw a leopard shark. He was really excited, and followed it deep under water. By the time he remembered to look up, he was already 60m deep and everyone else looked like like specks above him. He felt a sharp stab in his side - turned out to be a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) (sorry about the big medical word, I got super excited about knowing the exact diagnosis) due to the extreme pressure. He managed to get back up but passed out for a while. That was the last time he was able to dive.
You know, I saw a lot of myself in him, that's probably why we got along so well. Didn't really get a chance to ask him about his life and if he had a family though, really wanted to.
He took us to some cool spots:
Monkey Beach
Like the name suggests, the place is home to hundreds of monkeys, waiting to be fed by sun screen covered, non-environmental friendly tourists. I was very unhappy with what I saw. The photo speaks for itself:
Maya Bay
I believe this is where the movie "The Beach" was filmed - I need to see it still. It's really gorgeous, but because of that movie, it's become so famous that it's always filled with boats and people.
We also hiked up the tsunami evacuation route and found the home of a pretty chill monkey:
Some pretty lagoon
The water here was absolutely stunning!
I wanted to go for a swim, and Yadi insisted that I jump from the boat so he could get some burst shots of my jumping. He's kunda awesome :) here are some of my attempts...
Viking Cave
The Chinese are big on eating a certain kind of bird nest (swiflets?), which are found in rock caves. So in this cave, the Thais have built bamboo scaffolding to climb up to harvest those nests [:(].
Then it was time to say goodbye to Yadi.
Sam's first time using chopsticks!
We met some new friends in the hostel from Germany and Malaysia. Over dinner (check out my pineapple fried rice!) We shared our perspectives on the state of the world, mainly Trump and the Syrian refugee crisis. It was very eye-opening to say the least, to hear about the media portrayal of all of the above issues around the world. Amazing conversation.
Next stop: fire show with the new friends.
But little did we know, Songkran (Thai new year/water festival) has already started. This year it's 4/12-14, and today is the 12th.
Traditionally on this holiday, Thai people pour water on each other on the usually hot day. But the overwhelming backpackers' presence has made this day into a full-on white-people-shooting-water-at-each-other drunk fest. Sam and I were just walking down the street trying to get drinks, when 50 tourists wielding super soakers super soaked us with full-force squirting from every direction.
So we decided to arm ourselves:
SOO excited for tomorrow - it's going to be WAR!
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