August 14, 2007

Thailand Part Six: Koh Phi Phi

After all our sightseeing, elephant riding and river tubing in Khao Sok National Park, we were looking forward to taking the relaxation up a notch in Koh Phi Phi with some beach time, diving and night life.

Monday, August 13th

I got up super-early on Monday morning and sneaked out of the room without waking Meredith. By 8:30, I was already on a boat headed out for two dives. Here's the view as we pulled away from the island.

Passing the uninhabited, high cliffs of Phi Phi Don.

To put its size in perspective, those boats you see floating near it are like 5' tall.

Another view. The sea was so choppy our dive master almost canceled our trip...

...because we were diving right against the cliffs underwater and the current can knock you about quite a bit!

Dive #1

On my first dive, I was so excited and overwhelmed to be underwater again that I only remembered to take one photo! Here's the single, not-so-good photo I snapped right before I had to begin my ascent!

Back on the surface!

Dive #2

After resting for a bit after my first dive (you have to wait for your body to aspirate out the excess nitrogen that it's accumulated while diving or you can get Decompression Sickness - aka, The Bends) I was ready for my second dive. This time, I remembered to snap lots of pics! Here's a bannerfish!

A lionfish!

That let me get really, really close! (This was about as close as I was comfortable getting considering it's one of the most venomous species of fish in the ocean!)

After the lionfish, I ran into someone friendlier (and much less-dangerous!). This seal-faced puffer fish!

He was really friendly and didn't seem to mind that I was swimming along with him.

Soon after, I spotted a relative of his, a porcupine fish!

When this guy puffs himself up, he has a bunch of prickly spikes that stick out. If you look closely, you can see the spikes lying flat against his body behind his fin!

Not sure this guy was that briefly swam by me, but he was bright blue and yellow and gorgeous.

Parrotfish! These guys are really neat. They spend most of their time munching algae that grows on coral. They swim right up to the coral and you can hear them munching and crunching underwater and they scrape the reef!

It's real weird.

Then, a little bit later, I came across this trumpetfish!

Ok, now that I've shown you all the nice guys I met - it's time to see the SCARY GUYS! The first scary guy wasn't all THAT scary because he was sleeping! Sleeping shark! (Nurse shark, I think).

This guy was most definitely not sleeping and he was also most definitely not interested in me swimming much closer. Moray eel!

I had been swimming around what I thought was a big underwater coral formation, but when I surfaced, I realized what I thought was a reef was just a huge karst island that continued underwater!

The view over to the left a bit more.

The view of the boat behind me!

When I got back to the dive shop, Mer had left a note that while I'd gone diving she'd moved us to a new hotel! (The place we'd stayed at our first night was expensive because all the cheap places had filled up!). I dropped my gear off at the dive shop and set off to find our new hotel! I got there a little after 2pm and Meredith out book shopping and exploring the shops! So I decided to take a lil' nap...

...and then I hung out on our porch and played with this little guy and read and waited for Meredith to return!

meredith — A little bit before 4pm, this pretty lady showed up and we headed to a place on the beach...

...for a couple of fruity drinks...

...and some reading. I was working on Bangkok 8 by John Burdett (pretty much required reading for those that have been to Thailand, are in Thailand, or plan on going to Thailand...

...and Meredith was reading Qui M'a Tuee which translated means WHO KILLED ME?. (When you say the name of this book in English, you have to say it in a ghoul-voice with a French-accent! Oh, and it also should be said at a volume that's loud enough to cause any other diners that might be sitting near your table in the restaurant to whip their heads around in surprise.)

Then you should enjoy your pizza...

...and your delicious green curry with vegetables!

meredith — Mmmmmmm!

After we were finished eating, we made friends with another local cat.

Meredith kept pulling his scalp back and giving him smoosh face! Which was really funny because it gave him Thai eyes! RACIST!

After we finished eating our late-late lunch, we decided to walk down the beach and admire the crazy-ass low tide. (See how far the water retreats?)

meredith — Meredith is like 200 yards from the sand and the water is still only ankle deep!

See? The water is literally ankle deep and look how far away we are from the shore!

grant — After our beach stroll, we were walking back to our hotel and we can across one of the the funiest bizarro dopplegangers I've ever seen! Looks like Bizarro Midget Grant Stoddard's been Big Game Fishin' again!

grant — Holy, LOL.

After we'd finished hysterically laughing and we'd caught our breath, we decided to hike up to the highest point on the island to watch the sunset. Here's a view of one of the beach areas from about halfway up the really long steep path to the island's scenic overlook.

me, meredith — Catching our breath!

And here's the view from the top! See how thin the strip of land that separates the ocean? (This is the reason the death toll on this island was so high when the tsunami hit - all of the high rise fancy resorts that used to be on Phi Phi where built on this tiny strip of land that's only like 200 yards wide. When the tsunami came through, it pretty much bowled right over these buildings without anything else getting in the way.)

On the right you can see the mountainous other half of the island we were on (Koh Phi Don). In the background you can see Koh Phi Ley, the smaller uninhabited island where Maya Bay (made famous in the movie The Beach) is.

Sun getting ready to set.

When we got back to our room, we found the cutest (albeit, STINKIEST!) little kitten curled up on top of our sandals. We guessed that our smelly feet-smelling sandals must've reminded her of her mother! Stinky Cat! Hahaha.

meredith — We did a little pre-gaming on our front porch...

...and headed over to Reggae Bar to watch the Muay Thai fights and get our drink on! (The last time I was on Phi Phi, I was there helping to rebuild after the tsunami and the biggest party-thing that happened while I was there was the re-opening of this bar which had been destroyed by the waves.)

me, meredith — For those of you that have never been to Thailand, the party drink of choice where ever foreigners congregate in-country is THE BUCKET. Here's an overview of how they make THE BUCKET from another entry from the first time I visited Thailand:

How They Make THE BUCKET:
Take a plastic beach pail with a little ice in it, then dump in two bottles of Red Bull (and keep in mind, this is the original Thai version of Red Bull that feels like it actually has amphetamines in it), a can of Coke, and an entire pint of Thai whiskey. They they throw in 7 or 8 straws in the hopes that you'll share it with strangers and not die drinking the entire thing by yourself. Any where you go on the beach, someone has a bucket and they're only too happy to share it with you. Cost per bucket? $3. Ooof.

We went up to the bar to get a bucket, and to my horror we discovered that the bar was offering a TWO BUCKETS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE special! Doh! I told the bartender that we only wanted one and she was like "Well, you're gonna get TWO! Give it away if you don't want it!"

That sounded like sensible advice to me, but Meredith wasn't having any of it. She was like "Let's EACH drink a bucket! WOOOOOO!" Here's her getting started while I show my reservations about solo-bucket-consumption. Ooof.

In between real Muay Thai bouts, one of the bartenders would get in the ring with a sign advertising "FREE BUCKET FOR ANYONE WHO VOLUNTEERS TO FIGHT THAI BOXING!"

Keep in mind, a Thai Bucket costs about $3 USD. If you account for the TWO FOR ONE bucket special, you'll realize that these two jokers are about to pound the piss out of each other in one-hundred degree heat, in front of the entire bar for....A DRINK WORTH $1.50 USD!

They started out looking like they knew what they were doing, but as any person that's every been in a fight will tell you, if you haven't spent a significant amount of time learning some type of disciplined fighting technique...

...you will very quickly look like a flailing retard. And your best punches will be landed...

...in moments that look like this. The best part about this is, the crowd totally doesn't give a fuck. When this weird part happened, where the dude on the right had somehow managed to briefly lock his opponent's arm from the back, the crowd was yelling "Punch him in the back! Punch him in the back!" (The best part about this photo is that if you look closely, you can see the dude's back-skin all bunching up around where he's being punched! Ew!)

meredith — A little after 1am, the fights had ended and we'd (regrettably) finished our buckets!

We decided to head out in search of a new place to drink with a bunch of randos we'd met while watching the fights and getting ha-ha-hammered.

We ended up on the other side of the island (right near our hotel) at a place called Apache Bar that's right on the water.

me, meredith — Here's us realizing that we were pretty, pretty drunk.

How drunk? Drunk enough that doing filled-to-the-rim shots of Thailand's notoriously sweet, home-brewed Mekhong Whiskey with a German stranger we'd just made friends with sounded like a great idea!

daniel kuffer, meredith — Here's Meredith and our new friend Daniel. Bottoms up!

Apache Bar closed down around 2am and the entire bar headed over to a bar called Hippies has a bar right on the water and was still serving!

daniel kuffer, meredith — If I remember correctly, Meredith was giving Daniel girl-advice and I think it actually escalated far enough that Meredith got on his GSM phone and actually tried to get her on the phone so she could tell her what a great guy Daniel is. Hahaha. (If you want to know the kind of shape we're all in at this point, check out Daniel's eyes. Hahahaha. He can only keep one of them open!)

meredith, peter schmid — Meredith and Peter (the other German dude that our new friend Daniel was traveling with) decided to go for a late night swim in the wonderfully warm water.

meredith — While the swim was fun, Meredith realized that spending the rest of her drunk night in soaking wet clothes probably wouldn't be all that awesome and we decided to stumble home in search of dry clothes and a bed to pass out on.

Wednesday, August 15th

meredith — The next day we were SO. HUNG. OVER. that we didn't really managed to get showered and out of the room until around 3pm! We decided to take it easy and hired a local guy to take us on a three hour longtail boat tour of the surrounding islands.

Squinty, hungover me.

Heading out!

As you pass the side of Koh Phi Ley, the smaller uninhabited island that's near Koh Phi Don (the big island)...

...you pass the Viking Caves that are home to the birds that make the nests that are harvested to make bird's nest soup!

me, meredith — The gorgeous views were starting to work wonders on our hangovers.

Crazy, right?

Right around this corner...

...nestled between two huge, thirty-story mountains, is the side entrance to one of the tiny beaches in Maya Bay.

But instead of going in that away, we went all the way around the island so that we could swim in through the back way that's only open during low tide! During low tide, the water in the bay is really shallow and rocky so our boat driver anchored...

meredith — ...and handed us masks so that we could swim and sightsee the rest of the way in!

meredith — Sightseeing indeed!

Feeeeshes!

meredith — When you get into the shallow water, it's very dangerous because there are huge waves rolling in off the open ocean and they can knock you off balance throw you into the huge, sharp coral-covered rocks in the bay!

meredith — Meredith got a nasty gash on her knee!

meredith — After you make it out of the water, there's a hole that the ocean has cut into the mountain that you can only walk through when the tide is low!

meredith — When you walk through the hole, you find yourself in a tidal pool in the middle of the island! It's crazy!

Here's a view of the temporarily dry tidal pool and the hole that we walked through.

When you come out of the tidal pool, there's a path that leads you past a bunch of beautiful mangrove trees that grow in the estuary.

meredith — If you follow the path out of the dense forest of the inner island, you eventually come to...

...Maya Beach! Here's the view of one-half of the mountains that encircle the bay and make it sort of hidden.

Here's the view of the beach from out in the water.

meredith — And here's a better looking view of the beach from the water.

me, meredith — And here's a picture of my armpit thrown in to sex it up a bit.

meredith — After we spent some time enjoying the beach and exploring the rest of the island, we headed back to meet our boat driver...

meredith — ...and then after an early dinner at Hippie's Bar, we spent the rest of the night taking it easy in our hotel room reading!

Thursday, August 16th

We woke up on Thursday morning to torrential rain. If you haven't ever been to Asia during the rainy season, there's really no way to describe just how hard it rains. If you were to step out in the rain and stand there for 2 or 3 seconds, you would be completely soaked and your shoes would even have some water in them!

meredith — We brought in our clothes that we'd hung up "to dry" on the porch the night before and improved a drying system in our room. Que listo!

meredith — After four hours of reading in the room, we started to go a little stir crazy. We moved it out to the porch for a while...

meredith — ...and around 1:30pm we finally got motivated enough to suit up in our ponchos and wandered out to find something to eat!

We ended up going to an Italian restaurant and we shared a pasta dish and a pizza with blue cheese on it (that was really tasty!). By the time we'd finished eating lunch, the rain had finally stopped.

It was still really cloudy and muggy and overcast, so we decided to get really long massages! (250 baht for 1 hour of Thai Massage = $7 USD!)

On the way back to our room we spotted a bunch of HUGE snails that I guess had come out because the ground was so saturated with water from all the rain!

Look at the size of this guy!

meredith — After dinner, I took a nap! Meredith woke me up around 11:30pm and announced that she'd gone out and had purchased us...

...buckets so that we could do a little pre-gaming on the porch again and see if we wanted to head out again for another big night! Here's me getting my bucket on and playing with another kitty we'd made friends with.

I then showed up my huge muscles by doing a set of ten Kitty Curls! After we'd finished our buckets (and after I'd finished my workout)...

...we headed back to Reggae Bar to check out the Muay Thai fights! But with all of our pre-gaming, by the time we got there it was 12:45 and we only managed to catch the very last match of the night!

meredith — We wandered around for a bit and checked out a few other bars, but about 30 minutes later, we decided to grab a snack and then call it a night!

Mmmmmm! Banana crepe covered in Nutella = best way to end a night!