Friday, February 25, 2011

Ko Phi Phi

On Monday, we caught a ferry from Phuket to Ko Phi Phi Don, the largest of the Phi Phi islands. The guidebook describes Phi Phi as being more expensive than anywhere else in Thailand (and it was; we payed nearly £30 per night to stay here, massively more than anywhere else in Thailand) but cheaper than any other similarly beautiful island in the world.

The first sights of Phi Phi Don as the boat approached were indeed beautiful:



As we got a little closer, it was possible to appreciate the sheer limestone cliffs. I don't know if it's possible to see in this photo but the sea had been eating away at the lowest few metres of cliff, while rainwater attacking them from above had left stalagtates dangling down towards the sea.



After checking into our guesthouse, we went out for lunch at a restaurant by the beach. The beach was superb, by the way:



The afternoon was spent catching up on sleep, before heading out for dinner. We were disappointed by the sign that greeted us when we arrived at the restaurant:



I think that they meant to say "no food or drink not bought on these premises" or something similar. Those crazy Thai restauranteurs!

Hannah wasn't very well that evening so I went out on my own to explore. The beach had turned into party central:



Impressed, I returned to the guesthouse and persuaded Hannah that it would be more fun sitting on beach than lying in bed. We sat on mats on the beach, watching people twirling burning batons around and sipping the juice from a fresh coconut:



I was a little worried about mosquitos but my fears were calmed by the numerous paraphin fires built on top of cones of sand; I assumed that the mozzies wouldn't much like the smoke from those:



Not so, of course: I received a huge number of mozzie bites all over my feet, causing me much distress for the next few days.

The next morning, I left Hannah and climbed up the nearby hill to the lookout point. On the way up, I passed numerous signs like this one:



The signs were presumably installed following the boxing day tsunami in 2004, which utterly flattened the part of the island where we were staying and killed numerous people.

On the way up a sequence of steps on an unnecessarily steep path, I looked back and got a strange sense of deja-vu. Eventually, I realised that I had seen this view before, in some grainy amateur video footage of the island being innundated by the tsunami six years ago. Somewhere down there is the guesthouse where we stayed. A lot of people lost their lives when that thin strip of land was assaulted by water from both sides simultaneously.



When I reached the first lookout point (it turns out that there are several), I came face to face with some kind of bird of prey:



It turns out that the guy who lives there feeds it fish every day, which is one way to make sure it keeps coming back.

Finally, tired and drenched in sweat, I reached the highest of the lookout points, from which views of the island were beautiful:



Also visible in the distance was Phi Phi Lei, one of the smaller islands and the setting for the film The Beach. If you look carefully, you can see that Phi Phi Lei looks like Homer Simpson lying on his back.



Mmmmm... Donuts...

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