THAILAND: KOH PHI PHI

I was looking forward to visiting Koh Phi Phi the most out of all the islands that were on our agenda as it was the one I’ve never been to before. Everyone kept telling me that it was the best place to spend Christmas, although we weren’t staying for Christmas we were ready to explore.

We reached the island at around 12.30pm and walked round to our hostel. Looking out to the sea and the sea had reclined all the way back it was crazy, initially we all secretly thought that their was a Tsunami but we then later learnt that the tide goes out like that everyday exposing the shit left in the water. It wasn’t nice to look at.

We soon learnt that Phi Phi was a serious party island, it was so small, with only 2 beaches, one with the pier and the other where it stunk of shit and was full of party goers.

On our first night I realised this wasn’t the island for me and a sense of relief washed over me as we only had another 2 nights before heading off to Koh Tao for Christmas. After venturing into the town, having a few drinks and watching some Muay Thai boxing which was hilarious we tried to go to bed at approx 1am and the music from the hostel beach bar and next door was so loud, the walls were vibrating. We took one look at each other, ear plugs in and 10 hours later we woke up. I thought I was never going to get to sleep!

We got up and did a few errands like laundry and looking for somewhere to stay on our 3rd night. As we were on our way to the nicer beach we stopped to check out boats to Koh Tao which quickly resulted in going on an afternoon boat trip to Maya Bay.

We stopped off a few times to visit a monkey beach and a few snorkelling stops and an hour on the infamous Maya Bay where the 2000 film, The Beach was filmed.

We then ended the day watching the glorious sunset once again in the middle of the ocean on our long tail boat. There was something so peaceful being on a boat with about 12 people all sat in silence, with just the sound of the waves, watching the sun completing its daily ritual.

We ended our fantastic, spontaneous day by stumbling upon a nice little restaurant where we chose some fresh fish for dinner. We had sea bass and prawns. It wasn’t cheap but it was delicious! Then we had one more night in the noisy hostel.

Checked out and began the trek to our new home for the night. A hut? I had missed living in a hut.

Basic but so cosy. And for £6 a night we had wifi, shower, toilet, fan, electricity and a bed! What more do you need?

We had a rather chilled day before setting off to climb to the view point. A guy we met told us approximately where to go. On our travels we had passed a sign that pointed to the view point near our new home so we headed straight there. The first hill we climbed we were knackered and came across a small shop where we stocked up on water supplies. We asked the shop owner which way to the viewpoint and she pointed right up the hill.

Off we went, oblivious to the distance and height we had to climb ahead of us. 10 minutes in, we were a sweaty mess thinking wtf are we doing, are we even heading in the right direction? Mopeds and cars swizzle past us. Hill after hill. I can’t even describe to you the steepness of hills but we kept following the signs. We started to get worried about how long this was taking us as we didn’t want to walk back in the dark. Eventually we came across some other stragglers and we saw more signs that said 15 minutes away.

What felt more like 35 minutes, we had arrived but not before climbing some steep ass stairs just to make our legs cry even more. But the view was amazing. Phi Phi is such a small island you could literally see it all from up there.

We then realised we came up the wrong way and there was a paved, street lit pathway down straight into the town. After many photo opportunities we headed back, had some dinner and chilled for the evening.

We had a fantastic nights sleep before getting up early to start our Christmas Eve 9 hour boat-coach-boat journey to Koh Tao.