On Tuesday, after spending the day in Bangkok taking it in turns to sit with the bags in a café and going to look around the street stalls at 18:00 we got on the overnight bus.
I remember from last time I was in Thailand the overnight bus was not my favourite experience but this time it was worse! The seats were leather, ripped, old, cramped, dirty and the “toilet” on board was more like a tin bucket that stank and there was no light! At first we were fine, we’ve got into copied DVD’s since we’ve been here so watched “Bridesmaids” on Mister Alex’s laptop. After a couple of hours we had our first stop so everyone could relieve their bladders as no one was using the toilet on board. We bought some goodies here and once back on the bus I started tucking into my tolberone, it tasted really funny looked in the wrapper and there were loads of little ants in my chocolate! Lovely!
After an hour or so sleep we were woken at 24:00 by the bus lights all suddenly turning on and the drivers shouting that we all had to get off for the next stop. When I say shouting I mean shouting, no one was allowed to stay on and sleep. After half an hour we were back on the bus again only to be woken again at 05:00, told to get off and we had an hour until we were allowed back on. By this point everyone was bleary eyed, dirty and no one was in the best of moods. At 06:00 it was back on the bus again for 2 hours when we finally reached Krabi. From here it was another 2 hours by boat to Phi Phi.
Again I’ve been to Phi Phi before for a few days and knew it’s something special but coming round the corner to the island I realised my memory has not done this island justice! It is just stunning. Coming in from the boat theres islands coming up all around, green and full of colour, the water is a mix of blues and as Phi Phi island comes into view your greeted with white sands, palms with green covered mountains surrounding the sand. Absolutely beautiful!
We took a gamble coming here and hadn’t pre-booked anywhere to stay wanting to explore our options once we arrived. So we get here after hardly any sleep, boiling hot, dirty and declined any help from the guesthouse touts, took a map and set out to find ourselves a bargain. At first we struggled, all the guesthouses in and among the bars were charging 1000 to 1500 baht per room (£20 to £30 a night). We had seen on the map a little huddle of guesthouses that was a trek from the port but just out of the night life and a couple of minutes from the beach so we humped our bags there and hoped one would have a room. We were in luck, the first 2 nights here we stayed at “Tropical garden bungalows” for 800 baht a night between us but we moved this morning to “Harmony Lodge” (virtually next door) as we’ve got a room for 600 baht with free breakfast :).
Phi Phi island is just that, it has a beach on either side with the port being on one side. There’s no cars or roads just little streets with bars, restaurants, street stalls selling lots of nice clothes and lots of push bikes to get around! There’s a lovely chilled out and relaxed atmosphere here.
There’s so much here I can’t remember from last time, we’ve both fallen in love with it. Yesterday we walked up to the viewpoint that gives you a view over the island, absolutely breathtaking, well worth building up the sweat getting up there!
There’s 3 different points you can look out at the view and as we got to the third point we came across a little shack where they make fruit shakes but they also had 2 little pet monkeys! The lady told us the man who owned the shack had rescued them when they were babies either from older monkeys or from people developing the land we’re not sure which she meant! They clearly loved the man who had rescued them they wouldn’t leave him alone. Mister Alex was brave enough to let one on his shoulders but I was a wuss, too scared they might scratch or bite.
We’ve spent the rest of yesterday and today chilling on the beach. Yesterday Mister Alex bought a football that we played with for about an hour until a little Thai girl (about 2 years old) decided she wanted to play with it and us. She was obsessed with rolling it down the beach running to pick it up and then throw to me or to Mister Alex and we’d clap our hands, very very cute! So she ended up going home with Mister Alex’s football, how could we have asked for it back?
Last night we went out and had our first bucket (or 3). This is like a spirit and mixer served in a sand castle bucket. We went to a bar first that did thai boxing with professional boxers but also people from the bar can go up and have a go in the ring and everyone that takes part gets a free bucket. It didn’t take me much to persuade Mister Alex to put himself forward to do it! He went up against a guy called Anthony who it turned out was there with a couple from New Zealand and 2 girls from England and after the fight we ended going to a beach party with them and having an awesome night. Mister Alex did mint in the fight, but apparently lost to Anthony but after watching the videos back we’re a little bit unsure why! I thoroughly enjoyed being Mister Alex’s corner man, I was getting right into it! Think I’ll put myself up to have a go next time!
Waking up this morning, feeling a little fragile, Mister Alex realised he’d hurt his foot from kicking Anthony last night and it’s bruised so we went to get him a thai foot massage and since he was there I thought I might as well have a full body massage too. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, a thai massage is more like being pulled and stretched and actually hurt quite a bit at times but it sorted my hangover out anyway!
We’re not quite sure how long we’re going to stay here for, there’s a few trips we want to do here but we’re not in a rush we’ve got until the 23rd of December when we go to Kho Samui for Christmas so we’re going to share our time between here and an island nearby that we want to visit called Kho Lanta.
Lots of love to everyone xxxxxxxxxxx
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