Yoga ~ Travel ~ Joy: Ko Phi Phi

This morning we got up early to take a long tail boat to Koh Phi Phi Leh (a smaller island next to Ko Phi Phi Don) for snorkeling and swimming. We and the Italian couple paired with us set off around the northern tip of the island, then south along the west side of the island, which is mostly sheer cliffs; Ko Phi Phi Don is essentially one big karst.

Long tail boats as we left Koh Phi Phi Don.

Scenery on the west side of Koh Phi Phi Don.

Some perspective on how tall these cliffs are:
see the boat in front of the cliff?

After about an hour of riding in the NOISY long tail boat (ours sounded like a tractor with no muffler), we landed in Maya Bay, an inlet in the huge karst that makes up Koh Phi Phi Leh and has a glorious white sand and warm water beach surrounded by the sheer cliff faces of the karst. The island is thin enough here that a short walk through the peaceful jungle brings you to the other side of it, where you can see coral reefs under the shallow water. The walk through the jungle was a striking contrast to the beach itself; there are a lot of tourists and their noisy long tail boats on the beach, but only a few steps into the jungle it was completely silent except for the breeze through the tree leaves.

Gavin and I on Maya Beach.

Long tail boats on Maya Beach.


Obligatory "yoga on the beach" photo. With the magic of Photoshop, it looks like we are on a deserted beach, which certainly wasn't the case. :D

Maya Beach WITH all the tourists visible. :)

After swimming and relaxing at the beach, our boat took us to the other side of the island that we had walked to earlier, and we hopped into the water to snorkel. The reef was very shallow, and much of the coral was dead, but there were a TON of fish, and some of the most friendly and social fish I have ever been around; I think tourists must feed them. They swam right into our faces and all around us, and followed us as we swam around, getting as close to us as possible without actually touching us. We also saw a few bits brightly colored soft coral that closed when we waved a fin in front of it. There were also anemones with clown fish swimming through their fronds.

Long tail in the snorkeling area near Koh Phi Phi Leh.

Very shallow water made the reefs visible even from out of the water!

Panorama of the snorkeling area from our long tail boat.

Snorkeling near Koh Phi Phi Leh. Yes, I am one of "those"
people who wears a UPF shirt snorkeling. Hey, I get sunburned
really badly in the ocean! :)

Gavin snorkeling.

Look at how social these fish are! They are practically bumping into my face!

After snorkeling we made a brief stop at the Viking Cave. We parked pretty far away from it, we couldn’t even see a cave, it just looked like a large inlet. Gavin jumped into the water first, and while walking along the shallow bottom he said a fish swam up his shorts and back out! I got in the water next, and suddenly a white fish about the length of my hand was darting around and through my legs. I stopped to watch for a second, and it BIT me! Hard enough to draw a little blood! I have never been bitten by a fish in the ocean! I am guessing maybe it had a nest with young or eggs right under the boat where we had parked.

Panorama of Viking Cave area.

Me on our long tail boat.

On the way back to Koh Phi Phi Don, we and several other tourist boats stopped to ogle a colony of sea gypsies who live in caves on Koh Phi Phi Leh. They had built bamboo scaffolding to hold up their dwelling and to climb from one to another. We didn’t actually land at the village, just slowed down enough to see it and take pictures. I wonder what the gypsies think of all us tourists gawking at them all day…

We were back on Laemtong Beach by around noon, so we walked down the beach to have lunch. We sat down at MaMaPing Sea Gypsy restaurant, as it was one of the only restaurants on the beach that didn’t look like it belonged to a resort; they just had outdoor grills and electric skillets on tables to cook outside. I had a DELICIOUS panang curry (a type of red curry), and Gavin had a tasty noodle dish. There were flies galore swarming the kitchen area next to us, but I didn’t see any food actually exposed to them until they brought out a bunch of meat to put on the grill… One of those instances where it is best NOT to see the kitchen! :D

After lunch we finally got around to doing what one is supposed to do on an island beach resort: relaxing. :) We walked down the beach and found some perfect lounge chairs and a hammock in the shade of a large tree, and we read our books for a while. I can only relax for so long, so after a bit I walked through the ocean down to the beach massage pavilion, and I had a decadent beach massage, in the open air with the sounds of the waves and lovely smelling aromatherapy massage oil. It was a little weird in that she took off my bikini top, but I was covered the whole time so it didn’t matter. But she had unthreaded the straps, so I couldn’t put it back on. :) I had to use paper clips to thread the straps back through the bikini, all while trying to hold a towel to cover myself. :)

Gavin reading a book in a hammock on the beach. Can you get more tropical
resort cliche than that? :)

After my massage we headed up to the Sunset Bar a little early to make sure we didn’t miss the sunset again since it was our last night here. We were one of the first people there, so we got to pick a nice spot to watch the sun go down over the ocean with a couple drinks. We left pretty much immediately after the sun set to avoid the mosquitos swarms of last night.

Beautiful sunset from the Sunset Bar.

I took like a hundred pictures of the sunset. :)

Panorama of the sunset.

Since during the sunset we were watching rain moving toward us over the ocean and it started to get windy and cool like it was about to storm, we stayed on the resort for a Thai food buffet for dinner. Afterward, as we were walking toward the beach for an evening stroll, we heard singing coming from the reception area. We wandered over, and we saw several Thai people holding candles and watching a large television and singing together. Today was the king of Thailand's birthday, and I guess they all were joining in on the celebration via the TV. A resort staff person passed Gavin and I some candles to hold. After the celebration, we walked hand in hand along the dark beach, a lovely end to our last night on Koh Phi Phi.

Celebrating the king of Thailand's birthday.

Today was mostly an in-transit day. We returned our mopeds to the travel agency, then took a taxi to the ferry dock about 45 minutes away from the hotel. Our ferry to Koh Phi Phi was about 2 hours, then landing in the tourist-crowded town of Tonsai. While riding the ferry we were informed that we would have to take another ferry from Tonsai Pier to Laemtong Beach, where we are staying on the north side of the island. That ferry wouldn’t leave for another two hours, so we stopped for lunch at the Pirate’s House in Tonsai, the first place we came to that looked decent. The town was so crowded with tourists that we could barely walk, and we didn’t want to fight our way through it with all our luggage. I had a delicious watermelon smoothie, perfectly refreshing in the sweltering heat.

Long tail boats in Tonsai.

When we finally boarded the ferry a couple hours later, after waiting out a torrential downpour as the ferry arrived, watching all the passengers disembark and get soaked. Luckily when we boarded the rainstorm had all blown over. After about an hour the ferry stopped in front of the Holiday Inn Resort, and a long tail boat pulled up to take us the last few meters to the beach; there is no dock on Laemtong Beach.

After checking in, we relaxed in the room for a bit, scheduled our excursion for tomorrow, then decided to go catch the sunset on the other side of the island at the Sunset Bar; on this peninsula the island is slender enough to walk to the other side easily; the resort had bungalows and rooms all the way up and over the hill, and the Sunset Bar was set on the top of a cliff looking straight west. As we were climbing the stairs, we noticed a lot of people coming down, and when we got to the top we saw that we had missed the sunset. :) We had a drink anyway, and pretty quickly we were swarmed by mosquitoes, so badly that we went down to the hotel store and bought bug spray for $6 for a little 3oz bottle. Grrr, they know there is nowhere else to buy it, and we tourists will be desperate for it!

Laemtong Beach at night.

After missing sunset, we walked down the beach to the Phi Phi Natural Resort for dinner, as we knew they would be having a fire dancing show later. We had an average dinner (resort food so far on the trip has been mediocre), but the fire show was fun; basically fire dancing is baton twirling, except the batons are on fire. They twirled them by themselves, tossed them to one another, did various partner acrobatics with them, etc. After the show they let us take pictures with the fire dancers, who obviously found this part tedious. :)