Railay to Ko Phi Phi

November 8, 2010
Adam and I woke up on the morning of Halloween, packed our bags, said good bye to Railay, and headed to the beautiful island of Koh Phi Phi, a two-hour boat ride northwest. Koh Phi Phi is the infamous island where the movie The Beach was filmed and also one of the island’s that was hardest hit by a tsunami in 2004.

It was drizzling rain when we arrived in Phi Phi so we decided to head to a bar near the pier until it passed. While we were there we met a nice Aussie couple, Luke and Vivian, who had arrived from Phuket. Luke had been out searching for inexpensive places to stay and found a few up in the quiet part of the island, so through the pouring rain we all headed up the hill and booked a room at the Golden Hill Bungalows (a decent room with a fan and the added bonus of splattered mosquitoes all over the walls).

With the rain coming down we headed to ‘Garlic Restaurant’ for a cold beer and some good Thai food (what else were we going to do, it was raining), oh how we LOVE Thai food! For those of you who have not yet had the privilege to enjoy a Thai papaya salad, I suggest you do so at your earliest convenience (fortunately we got the recipe from the owner of this place and I will be making it when we get home) it’s AMAZING!

Our first two days on Phi Phi it rained without stopping, which was a bummer, as there’s not much to do when this is happening. We found ourselves at the bookstore both days where we enjoyed reading our books and drinking tasty coffee shakes and hoping for the sun to make an appearance.

One of the highlights of our time on Phi Phi was an all-day boat/snorkeling tour around the island. The tour began in the morning with a stop at Shark Bay to snorkel. We snorkeled around the reefs, looking at unique and colorful fish and hoping to catch a glimpse of a shark, yet we had no luck. As I was getting back into the boat, I had my first experience with getting stung by a jelly fish…ouch!

After Shark Bay, we made our way to beautiful Bamboo Island. As the boat anchored off-shore, we jumped in and swam to the sandy beach and walked around the island that is also a nature preserve; pretty cool place, but very small; following Bamboo Island we headed to Monkey Island. In the bay, we snorkeled around the reef looking at sea urchins, little “Elmo” fishes [sidenote: I (Adam) was looking at little ‘Nemo’ fish, not sure what little ‘Elmo fishes’ are, but I love you still the same Cath], clam shells, octopus and other fun sea creatures; and from the boat, we watched the langur monkeys run all over the beach.

Our final stop on the tour was Maya Bay on Phi Phi Lay, a stunning little cove sheltered by surrounding cliffs (this is where they filmed the movie ‘The Beach’, a story about a group of young travelers who drop out of society to live on a remote island in Southern Thailand). The bay is beautiful and quiet and the water is exceptionally clear. After Maya Bay, we headed back to Phi Phi Don to enjoy a wonderful Thai dinner at our favorite restaurant, yep, Garlic (the Massaman Curry was INCREDIBLE!).

Another highlight for me, were the adorable spider monkeys. There were a handful of them that local Thais had taken as pets, like the one I am with in a picture. The owners of the monkeys also have both the mother and the father of the babies, so the families stay together. They were so sweet, cute and cuddly; whenever I saw these little cuties I couldn’t keep my hands off of them.

We spent 5 days on Ko Phi Phi and it was a great place to visit, but we were happy to be heading up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand via PLANE (yes, no long bus ride!!) the following day. A short stop over on Phuket (which has some beautiful beaches, but other than that a little expensive and overrated) and a few hours in the airport and we were on our way, cheers!