The first free day in Phuket....off to Phi Phi!
The organizer for the training meeting was brilliant. He built in a free day! So my Monday was a full-day affair on a speedboat with a colleague to traipse to the Phi Phi islands for some snorkelling and fun! All aboard!
After a half-hour bus ride through town, we got to the Marina where they happily gave us some snacks and plastic bracelets (for ID) to send us on our merry way. Hmm, I forgot to take the dramamine.
But onward we go. Here we were passing some of the houses on stilts.
Here we are jetting out of the marina into the ocean. The ocean was calm, the breeze was warm, and the islands were jutting out of the water everywhere.
That's my work colleague, Nic, and the other troop in the other boat.I think they were trying to race each other.
We got a brief rainshower but was dry by the time we caught sight of the Phi Phi islands. That is Phi Phi Don on the left and Phi Phi Le on the right. We go left first to visit the infamous Monkey beach.
This island looked like something out of Jurassic Park or King Kong. The cliffs were skyrocketing upwards from the crystal blue waters and crowned with verdant trees and bushes.Here was our first snorkeling stop.
Naturally, the tour operators tossed out bread to lure the countless fish into view. The snorkeling was OK, having gone to the Great Barrier Reef. The area was getting run down as you can easily see the erosion from all the traffic coming in. The sea life was alright. Next!
The joy of the trip were the monkeys at nearby Monkey beach. They come down the mountains to get the free handouts and bemuse the tourists. Here are a couple of kayakers who should not have docked their boat as the monkeys started to rummage through their stuff. They narrowly escaped to the sea as the monkeys hardly swim. It was a bittersweet sight as the monkeys have gotten used to the people handing out food as well as rummaging through the garbage that gets washed up to shore. Argh.
Off to Phi Phi Le!
We stopped by a cave (so were 6 other tour boats) where they harvest the infamous "bird's nest" for the equally-craved-for soup.
We then headed in with the rest of the herd of tour boats inland into the island where they had a lagoon.
We got a chance to swim for a spell. The waters here were deeper and the snorkeling was a little better. I got to see some fun fish like this 3 foot long pipe fish.
Lastly, we had to dock into the famous Maya beach. This was where they filmed that Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Beach". In the movie they actually closed off the gap you see here with a digital image. It was a popular spot as there were probably about 20 boats docked. Crazy!
Who were we to argue with the gorgeous sun and scenery?
We then sped back to Phi Phi Don to a village that housed a hotel where we had a buffet lunch. No pics here as the food there was uneventful. Shocking, I know!
The village had everything you can possibly need from an ATM to Internet! Why not move in?
Last part of the tour was a stop at the private island of the tour operators. Ok, it was jam-packed as well but we ran into VERY choppy waters so we were ready to get off the boat and rest our whiplashed necks.
Ahh!
Then before we knew it, time was up and started to head back through the VERY choppy waters into the marina...
...is that mud?
Umm, were those the houses we saw earlier? The lowtide was so incredible that one of the tour boats got stranded in the mud. We were lucky.
Starving for some Thai food, I ordered room service of duck curry and pad thai. The food was SPICY HOT! My goodness, they even served chili peppers and flakes on the side. We'll see how I fare through the week.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, September 02, 2007 at 11:00 PM.
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Thems some nice and pur-tay photographs you got there. Hope your having fun. Hope you found a big gift to give to Jessica to make up for the fact that you didn't take her along! ;-)
Hey! Shopping was a dud there. Glad you like the photos and as you can see, I try to make the best of things ;)
love lots!
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