Koh Phi Phi
It’s another sunny, 85 degree day here, and a pretty low key one for us. Our only real goal is to make the 3 pm ferry to Koh Phi Phi, so those of us inclined to sleep in get a chance to do so, and we are able to enjoy a leisurely breakfast for change, rather than trying to cram some food down on our way past the restaurant to catch a shuttle.
We make it to the pier in plenty of time, only to find that, unsurprisingly, our ferry has been delayed. Once again, there is a new, comfortable looking boat tied to the dock that causes us to get our hopes up, but of course ours is the tub that pulls up next to it. It’s pretty tight quarters (think coach seats on an airplane but with a 6 foot ceiling), but the ride is only 90 minutes, and with Kindle in hand passes pretty quickly.
On a previous trip, I stopped in Koh Phi Phi for a few hours on the way to Koh Lanta, and from that brief experience, it seemed like a place to try and stay longer if the opportunity ever presented itself. It’s a fairly small island (two really, but only one is inhabited), with no motorized transportation other than the long tail boats that serve as taxis to some of the more remote parts. Crammed in between two opposing bays with limestone cliffs on either end, sits the town, which was mostly wiped off the map during the tsunami.
We get shafted a little trying to get settled in, as the hotel we have booked wants us to buy a second room because we have 3 people and they have no extra beds. I have no guilt about making Nick sleep on the floor (which is often no harder than the beds is Asian hotels), but they ultimately shoo us off to an affiliated hotel that has a bigger room, but that shakes us down for another $20 a night. On the upside, it is closer to the beach, so the final outcome isn’t so bad.
It is close to dinner by the time we get all checked in, so we take a walk through town to check it out and find a place to eat. Our choice is thoroughly unremarkable, but fills the tank while we continue on exploring the maze of walking streets.
As a day tripper, the side of Koh Phi Phi that I didn’t see was that it really comes to life at night. There are acres of young people here, and they come out in force as the night progresses, filling the many bars in the town and the strip of clubs lining the northern beach. It is body painting night at Slinky’s, and on any other night it sounds like the kind of thing Angela loves to do, but even in Thailand Nick is too young for Jello shots, so despite her disappointment we have to take a pass.
While wandering around with no specific purpose, we make note of some of the busier looking restaurants and cheap massage places for future reference, and somehow Angela manages to find a place (or two) that sells souvenir t-shirts that we have to stop at and thumb through for small sizes. We also partake of a few food carts, and Nick takes street food to a whole level after he drops half a slice of pizza on the ground, but invokes the 5 second rule and brushes it off (now all those pre-travel booster shots make perfect sense).
The other thing there are acres of here is dive shops, so we also take some time to come up with a plan for that. This is supposedly one of the better places for scuba in Thailand (not in the same class as the Similar Islands or some of the sites off of Koh Lanta, but high up in the second tier), and it turns out that because the actual sites are so close, that we fit in two dives and be back on shore in time to catch the ferry we will be taking to Railay Beach. That leaves us with a wide open day tomorrow to explore the island.