Koh Phi Phi

We thought to make our way to Koh Phi Phi from Koh Tao in hopes of escaping some of the madness that was to ensue on Koh Panyang for New Years Eve.  Koh Panyang is where all the full moon parties happen in Thailand, and well... even though it wasn't going to be a full moon on NYE, they were throwing a Full Moon Party anyway, and everyone that we had met on Koh Tao was going.  That means, for those of us that are poor planners, accommodation  would be slight and expensive, parties would be vicious and dirty, and people would be shady and potentially creepy.  We thought it would be better to spend the dawning of the New Year somewhere more mellow, like Koh Phi Phi.  Only after we had booked the trip did we find out that Koh Phi Phi is actually known for being more rowdy than Koh Panyang.  But the lid was already on the coffin, so to speak.

So we took an overnight boat from Koh Tao to Champon that was actually a garbage barge, with a sleeping area that was reminiscent of a prison, which would have been alright if I had slept, the trouble was, the bed bugs kept me awake all night.  At Champon we traded our ticket stubs for more ticket stubs onto an early morning van ride from Champon to Krabi.  Again, late for our said departure time, we got hoisted into an open air pick-up truck and driven maniacally to the dock.  No problem, we caught the ferry from Krabi to Koh Phi Phi in plenty of time.



Met again by the same insane tourism board, we found that all the things we had heard about Koh Phi Phi had been true- it was chalk full of tourists, all accommodation was basically booked and twice as expensive, and it was... unspeakably beautiful.

Docked, Koh Phi Phi Don

Koh Phi Phi is rumored to be the most picturesque island in Thailand.  Everyone knows this because Leonardo DiCaprio said so in a movie called "The Beach."  That magical piece of ethereal, tourist-free white sand that he was given a secret map to in Bangkok (so the story goes) is actually the south island called Koh Phi Phi Leh.  It is a world heritage site, so nobody can stay there (except for the occasional overnight tourist camps), and there isn't a huge pot field on one side of it (I checked).  But it may be, all tourist day trippers aside, one of the most beautiful pieces of beach I have stepped foot on.

The Beach

Koh Phi Phi was also one of the places hit the hardest by the tsunami in 2004.  This may have resulted in a die hard attempt to drum up more tourism ever since. Although, it was hard to tell, as we went during the absolute peak of Thailand tourist season.  Getting off the ferry to Koh Phi Phi Don, we had nowhere to stay, and high hopes to get a place for around 200 baht per person a night (around $6).  The trouble with Thailand tourism during peak season is that all of the booking agents will go around to all of the guest houses, hostels and hotels in the area, buy up all of the rooms, and then sell them individually to tourists as they arrive.

Koh Phi Phi

The funny thing is that the booking offices don't jack up the price like you'd think.  They actually charge what the room would go for at asking price at the hotel.  We didn't know that, and we naturally assumed that a booking office would charge more for the room than the hotel.  To be fair, usually at the hotel, you can talk them down a bit, which means that you may not pay asking price if you go to a hotel or hostel concierge and say, "Look.. we are four, and chances are only three of us will make it back to our room anyway, how's about a discount."  Usually, the concierge will oblige and knock a few hundred baht off the asking price.  But during high season, this logic does not apply.  Most places are booked full, and if they aren't, they are definitely charging full price.  When we arrived though, all of the booking agents had already made their rounds, thoroughly, and there was really nothing left.

This business tactic on the part of booking agencies is a nod to business in Thailand.  From my vantage point, there seemed to be a general concern with spreading the wealth.  Hotels happily give up the rooms to booking agents, so that they may also feed their families, and booking agents aren't greedy, they simply ask for what the room is worth, and they will not take any less.  I came to find that this approach worked for all booking and tourism in Thailand.  As I had mentioned before, most legs of a journey require a boat, a truck, a bus, and then maybe another bus.  It seemed that there was a general interest in involving as many parties as possible on the "money train."  I would assume that each of these journeymen gets "tipped out" by the original booking agency.  This means that everyone is ensured some kind of job, and open bed pick up trucks don't need to go around offering rides to backpackers as they get off the boat.  This happens in Bangkok when tuk-tuk drivers charge peanuts to take you around the city to show you the sites, but insist on "stopping in" to what seems like an arbitrary suit store, jewelery shop, or canal boat tour site, but are in fact, the livelihoods of his friends and family.  You scratch my back, I scratch yours.  For bringing patrons into the shops, tuk-tuk drivers get a little bit of money for gas, and if they buy something, well... the tuk-tuk driver gets a cut of the profits.  I'm assuming, if a business owner shorts a tuk-tuk driver it would not fare well for the business owner, so it would be in his best interest to keep things honest, and due to that, the tuk-tuk drivers have little concern about their own livelihoods.

So, to return to my original point, booking agencies on Koh Phi Phi, knowing a wave of tourism larger than that tsunami was coming for New Years Eve, wouldn't budge, and they didn't need to.  They were charging full asking price because they knew, when up against no other options, people would pay.


But we didn't.  We continued along the main drag of Koh Phi Phi, which snakes in sort of an "S" formation through T-shirt stalls, street food stands, bars, liquor stores, restaurants, fruit stands, "Original Pad Thai recipe" huts, electronic shops, jewelery stands, and the like. The streets were flooded with European kids, flashing neon colored fake Ray Bans, "Chang" beer shirts, and bathing suits.  We got a bit of advice from some friendly dive shop owners from Ireland who told us that it was true, all accommodation was booked, but to keep walking because there were some cheap backpackers hostels further down the street.

And so we made it to The Rock.  Yes, aptly reminiscent of Sean Connery's stint on Alcatraz, The Rock looked like a prison camp meets a techno rave with a bit of college dormitory thrown in for interest.  200 baht per bed a night, and we'll take it.  In the breezeway between dorm rooms, there was graffiti written all over the walls, and none of the doors had locks.  Travelers from all over the world nodded their heads, smiled, and said "hello"  as we walked past with our backpacks, and then continued to roll their cigarettes.  The graffiti continued into all of the dorm rooms, with writing above and beside all of the beds, light switches, doorways, and windows.  The writing was nice— mementos of past travelers who had too much to drink and thought of something garbage and philosophic to write on the walls.  My personal favorite: "I know why this place is called The Rock, because that is what their beds and pillows are made of!!"

The Rock

The Rock

Koh Phi Phi was obviously more hectic.  We had come to avoid the hassle of Koh Panyang, but one look at the place, and we knew it was not going to be the case.  As mentioned before, the variety in street stalls and stores was a nod to how many tourists breached the island.  The first day on Phi Phi was spent dodging the rain, haggling for a towel so I could shower, and dipping beneath tarps to grab snacks of banana waffles, coconut pancakes, spicy squid soup and fresh-baked artisan breads.  Cute cafes with free wifi shared walls with fruit stands, and bars offering two-for-one buckets.  The streets flowed with water and mud splattered everywhere.  But it was warm.  Thai people mingled through the stands, talking with one another, swapping dried fish for fruit, looking at their cell phones, hanging around.  Tourists mused between stands, looking, haggling, talking, and drinking beers as they walked and talked.  It definitely had a dirty look to it, but the feel was quite different. 

 

 

 

Along the pier side of the central isthmus of Koh Phi Phi Don, there is Long Beach which lies along Tonsai Bay.  Here, there were some nicer hotels and restaurants.  Restaurants were selling lobster, prawns, and fish that you could choose, have grilled, and brought to you.  It was like Koh Tao, just more touristy.  It kind of reminded me of Seaport Village in San Diego.  Along the northern end of the main road, bars clustered, and streets veered left where they ended up on the beach along the other side of the isthmus, the Loh Dalum Bay side. On this beach, there were more restaurants facing out towards the water, and it was here, that all of the nighttime parties were to happen.  While many of the restaurants extended their tables out to the sand, like Koh Tao, it was more expensive and much less charming.  This was probably just because the beach was bigger, and extended much more widely out to the bay, giving it a sort of barren feel.  No palm trees, no lush mountains, no small huts tucked away anywhere... it was all exposed and out.

Which made it the perfect place to host a countless number of beach parties.  All of the bars and restaurants along this side of the island hand podiums and dancefloors of sand.  Neon lights flashing bar names lured people in, and most of the bars earlier on in the night, provided entertainment, like jumpropes made entirely from light strands, light up limbo poles, and neon swing sets.  It was like an insane children's land for kids who aren't really kids anymore.

Parties along the beach

Late in the afternoon on our first day I ran into a guy that I used to bartend with in Melbourne.  (The world is small when you travel.)  We started the evening with buckets of red-bull vodkas (quite an aperative), and moved on to an expensive dinner on the beach where I had a relatively unmemorable yellow curry and coconut milk dish.  We ran through the row of beach bars, dodging in to jump rope and limbo at a few, and then made our way back down the main drag to try to catch some Muay Thai boxing.  Turns out, every night in Koh Phi Phi they open a Muay Thai boxing ring up for a bunch of idiots to get in and fight each other.  The prize: a bucket of booze.  So you can imagine the kind of awful hi-jinks that ensues.  I could only stomach a few minutes of the stuff, and then had to leave.  We spent the rest of that night becoming lost in the lights shed by tattoo parlours, t-shirt shops, beach bars and 7-elevens that are always open.




The following day we paid a man named Riz, 500 baht a piece, to be our personal tour guide for the day.  He had a 15-ft. wooden boat, with a light roof made of blue plastic tarp, and he agreed to take us around to all of good sight-seeing spots.  The boat had a decent engine that gurgled when he started it, and in the hull beneath the bow of the boat, Riz had about four snorkel masks that he had to rummage around a bit to find.  It was good enough for us. 

 

Riz

This is truly where Koh Phi Phi stands out.  The islands of Koh Phi Phi and all the small islands surrounding are made of large rock formations.  The rock formations tower high above the water like natural skyscrapers, with sheer cliff faces that make the stomach drop just to think about what it would be like to jump from top.  The cliffs appeared to have been made from limestone and volcanic rock of some kind, and the bushy foliage on top seems to be clinging to the peaks for dear life.

Riz putted us around to all of the tourist spots— monkey beach to watch a group of tourists lose their sandwiches to fat monkeys who get fed all day as an attraction, Phileh Bay which may have been the most majestic swim I have ever had, and to Maya Bay, the famous beach I was talking about earlier.  Between these major stops, I laid my head back on the worn wood of the boat bow and watched the towering rocks float by in a sea of turquoise blue.  Occasionally, Riz would pull the boat up to one of the fixed anchors around the islands so that we could jump off and snorkel.  We all remained relatively quiet for the day, eating our chicken and cheese sandwiches, letting the scenery eat us up.

Monkey Beach

 

Phileh Bay

Maya Bay

Maya Bay

There was something sort of silent and scary about these islands.  We couldn't help but imagine what it must have looked like to have the waves of a tsunami swelling over these rocks, rushing in on that beautiful beach on Maya Bay, tearing through those vicious rocks with an even more vicious destructive energy.  Even thinking about someone going mad on that little island of Maya Bay made my skin prickle.  The feeling stuck with me out on the open sea, passing those huge, foreboding cliffs.  There's nothing that makes you feel small and defenseless like the power of Mother Nature.

Remains of a Shrine, Maya Bay

Back on the island, with the worst sunburn I'd seen since my last tropical vacation, we quickly washed and turned ourselves around for New Years Eve.  The last day of 2010 had felt strange, and despite how much we had all enjoyed ourselves on Riz's boat that day, I think something stuck with me.  We focused our energies on finding a decent meal for dinner and a decent bar for after.


After not much decisive reasoning, we ended up at the only restaurant where we had seen lobster.  I thought a bottle of cold white wine and a grilled lobster dinner would end the day, and the year, nicely.  Turns out, lobster is as overpriced in Thailand is it is anywhere else, and despite the novelty of having it, it was nothing great.  We picked out our fish steaks, lobsters, and prawns to go with our white rice and salads, drank some white wine and some Chang beers, and made a final "cheers" to 2010.

Dinner

The rest of the night was the expectant zoo that we'd heard it would be.  Buckets of vodka red bull were purchased at one bar, and then brought to the next.  I made a street cat friend, whom I named Marie Antoinette 2011, ran into a few other JETs I had met in Tokyo, and managed to lose a couple of the boys early in the night—one of whom woke up a few hours later buried up to his neck in sand, the other found himself trapped inside a shower until day break when a nice Thai woman let him out. Meanwhile, Rick and I painted ourselves with glow paint, danced on a stage for awhile, and then kicked off the party to film idiots in the street, trying to get them to say ridiculous things on video.  When we lost interest in that, we ate a load of street food to make up for our scant lobster dinner.  After chicken skewers, BBQ pineapple and some fried rice, we called it quits and retired back to The Rock.

Marie Antoinette 2011

Midnight

I woke up once in the middle of the night to the sound of the boys shouting at one another— one trying to figure out what was going on, the other saying he would murder him for leaving him locked in that shower all night.  Neither had any recollection of this argument in the morning. I dozed back to sleep for a few hours wondering what the hell had happened, and dreamed of two monkeys locked in a cage throwing sand at one another.



I got up pretty early, scrubbed the last of my body paint off, made a few calls and emails home to bid a happy new year, and strolled around a lifeless Phi Phi on the first day of the year.  The morning was quiet and peaceful, as if nothing had gone on the night prior.  I quite liked this view of Phi Phi, and reveled in the morning silence, before returning to the Rock to pack the last of my things, and prepare the boys for our journey onwards.  We had decided to head north, all the way up to Changmai, via Bangkok, and we needed to book the long journey there.  The only thing we worried about was whether or not we could actually get off that island.

New Years Day, 8am.

Maya Bay

Phileh Bay

Phileh Bay

Phileh Bay

Phileh Bay

Maya Bay

Maya Bay

New Years Day, The Rock