Twas time to board a boat out into the Andaman Sea.
A bus picked us up from our hotel in Ao Nang and took us to Noparatthara Pier where we boarded the ferry. It cost us around 450 baht – about £11. I love Thai prices.
The boat ride lasted about 45 minutes. Maybe an hour I can’t remember.
If you go to the front of the boat, you have to sit down – otherwise the driver will beep his very loud horn at you.
Anyhow, the boat sails along Ao Nang and the Railay peninsula and offers some pretty beautiful views. I loved the boat ride tbf – I just sat at the front and snoozed to the sound of the waves.
On the way to Phi Phi you’ll pass Chicken Island, so named cos of a rock formation jutting up in the shape of a chicken’s head. Unfortunately I was too chilled to take a photo of this…
We arrived on Ko Phi Phi Don, the largest island of the Phi Phi Islands (pronounced Pee-Pee). There are no roads on Phi Phi, which means there are no taxis or tuk-tuks. So we had to walk to our hostel up the hill and into the jungle. My God, in the afternoon sun this was an ordeal. Some of the path was pretty steep, so by the time we made it to the Jungle Hill Bungalows, we were drenched in sweat.
This was the cheapest place we could find on Phi Phi and we paid for it in sweat and energy. Mosquitoes are a problem here so staying indoors was a must. After showering and recovering some energy, we head back down to the main village of Ton Sai (fortunately it was nothing like the Tonsai we stayed on a few nights prior).
Dusk had settled upon Loh Dalum Beach.
Koh Phi Phi Don is a tourist hotspot. There were lots of bars and lots of beautiful women and hunky men. Andy and I brought our dad-bods to the party and settled first at Dojo Bar.
That’s right! Dojo was an ENGLISH bar – our first of the trip.
Prices were typically English – expensive. We made use of the happy hour deals and moved next door to a much more vibrant bar named Stockholm Syndrome.
We met a southern English lass named Kalreece and she painted Andy’s face. A man came over and painted a “21” on my cheeks. That wouldn’t do – I grabbed the paint and did some editing.
27 and proud. Well, not proud… 27 and resigned to that fact.
The walk home was nightmarish. I’d wanted to go with Kalreece to a beach party but now the only mission was to get Andy home. It was a wrestling match. I had been pretty drunk but suddenly I was sober. At one point Andy ran off, and then ran back. Then he ran off again as I sat down to catch my breath. I looked all over Tonsai trying to track him down but there was no sign. Eventually I decided to go back to the hostel and went to bed.
At 6:40am, Andy knocked on the door. I let him in and he told me he’d been asleep in a tree. I went back to sleep.
A few hours later we woke up and Andy showed me his jungle den.
It was a shell of a house, literally meters from our hostel. He’d climbed up the stairs somehow and collapsed on the landing. He doesn’t remember how he got there or what happened in the hours between Stockholm Syndrome and waking up in a tree house. All he remembers is waking up in the wild, without his wallet and his phone. Luckily for him, I had foreseen such a disaster and mugged him of his phone and wallet the night before – when he was trying to throw around 500 baht notes.
If anyone has any information about Andy’s night out on Phi Phi, please leave a comment in the box below.
Anyhow, Andy survived. His new nickname is Boomerang – cos somehow he always makes his way home.
We went for breakfast in the place we’d eaten tea the night before.
We highly, highly recommend the Black Sheep. Cheap prices, great food, good portion sizes and speedy wifi. We ate ALL our Phi Phi meals here.
The Black Sheep is right opposite a memorial garden for those who died in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004. Many lives were lost and almost all the buildings of Ton Sai were destroyed. Crazy to think how quickly the village was rebuilt…
We found a bit of shade on Loh Dalum Beach. Hungover Andy was all about shade today. It was pretty damn hot so I was not complaining. On the way to the beach we had both bought a vest that featured Homer Simpson hiding in the bushes. This was a synonym for Andy’s adventures on Phi Phi.
Twas too hot to wear them though.
Space is at a premium on Phi Phi and there are some pretty draconian rules…
One rule for one, another rule for others. Didn’t see this bastard buying anything.
After shadebathing all day we went back to Black Sheep for tea. On the way we passed a bench.
Oh yeah! It was Valentine’s Day! Happy Valentine’s to my calamitous comrade…
At the Black Sheep I ordered a seafood pizza.
In Thailand, seafood pizzas contain prawns, crab and squid. It was absolutely delicious. More kudos to Black Sheep.
Afterwards we went back to the hostel and tried to sleep in the humid room. A load of bites had now become visible upon Andy’s body and legs and arms – everywhere. He looked like a leopard. He was very much regretting his antics from the night before. The moral of this story is don’t get yourself so hammered that you fall asleep in a tree house on a tropical island – unless you enjoy being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
There were plenty of things we DIDN’T do in Phi Phi. For one, the path up to our hostel eventually leads to a pretty viewpoint – but we were too unfit to hike this trail.
Another thing you should look at in Phi Phi is heading out to Maya Bay on Koh Phi Phi Leh. This was the setting for the 2000 film The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio. However, the beach is currently closed as it recovers from environmental damage caused by all us tourists.
Anyhow, our time on Phi Phi was at an end. Another ferry awaited us, and Phuket was the destination…
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