Back to Bangkok
July 16
The sun is out, its a beautiful day. Our ferry ride to Koh Phi Phi is relaxed, everyone sun-bathing on the top deck. The islands in this area are incredible. All of them are giant rock cliffs, eroded at the base from the ocean with dense vegetation huddled at the tops. The Island itself finds habitable area with relatively flat ground and protection from the seas on an isthmus between two larger land masses. The town on the island still shows signs fro the Tsunami, with a lot of reconstruction going on. Thin pedestrian ways are lined by shops, restaurants, bars, hotels, and dive centers. Not a full width road exists, and save fro a couple of motorbikes with side carts, there isn't a powered motorvehicle on the island. Transportation to other places on the island, such as long beach, can only be done by either navigating backwoods paths, rocky beaches at low tide, or by a long-boat taxi ride. We spend the remainder of the day exploring the main town a little and relaxing.
July 17
Today we have scheduled a tour on a long boat of Koh Phi Phi Leh, an uninhabited neighboring island. The long boat is essentially a sampan. A long wooden boat, probably of a traditional fishing boat design, the boat's engine must compensate for the boat's length and turning radius by putting the prop at the end of a long shaft that stretches from a giant engine block on a swivel at the back of the boat. Our tour consists of swimming in an inlet on the island. The fish are everywhere and brightly colored and the water is more clear than pool water. Our next stop is a little back door passage onto the main part of the island. The main beach area is a popular place and boasts the location for the filming of "The Beach," and for one reason or another, they charge 200 baht just to visit the beach. By taking this back entrance, we avoid the fee, and at the same time, have an excellent time navigating under a cliff and through a tiny cave entrance, as waves threaten to slam us against the underside of the stone faces. Fortunately, a series of ropes provide something to hang onto when a wave that could potentially knock you violently into a wall rolls through. Once through the tiny hole, the violence of the waves gives way to a peaceful forested area, protected from the ocean by giant rock walls. We explore the area a bit before returning to our longboat, via the hole of erupting ocean water. Next we go back to Koh Phi Phi Don, the main island, and before we end our trip, we go to Monkey Beach, which is a tiny little strip of sand next to some dense forest where lots of monkeys go, probably more because of the frequent visits from tourists throwing bananas to them than anything else. Upon our return to the main island, we begin searching again for lodging, because Ryan and Rory have fallen in love with Long Beach, which is a larger more serene beach up the coast. Unfortunately, if you don't want to walk for 25 minutes on backwoods paths, up and down steep muddy hills, or along a beach of slippery rocks at low tide, the only way to get there is via longboat. For this reason, I felt it was better to stay and just visit long beach for the beach, since everything else was here in the main town. After wasting the afternoon trying to figure it all out, we ended up back at the same exact hotel we started with. Fortunately we were able to enjoy our evening. We had dinner off the beaten path in a back alley at a quaint little place. We sat at two of the three tables they had, on plastic stools. We shared the tarp sheltered space with the kitchen area, next to a pile of wood. It ended up being one of the best and cheapest meals we had. After some relaxing time, we went to a few of the bars. Hippy's bar was right on the beach, and from our beach side seats we watched with clear view a very impressive fire show. It started with a girl awkwardly moving small torches around, but it soon erupted into a full acrobatic and choreographed show, with flaming staves and fireballs. A good way to end the day.
July 18
Today I started nice and early, to get to my Discover Scuba Diving course. The rest of the guys decided they would rather save their money, but for $75, I had to take the opportunity to spend my day underwater. After a couple hours of training video and basic instruction and a boat ride out to Koh Phi Phi Leh, I was 12 meters down, staring fish right in the face. At first it seemed communication was a bit difficult, with the instructor making wild hand gestures to two of the girls in the group, as if yelling with his hands, but eventually everyone got the hang of swimming and dealing with the regulator and following the hand gestures. Our first dive was in a more gradual sloping environment, with small intermittent reefs. The second dive took us along a sea wall full of life and all kinds of odd creatures. There are far too many fish to name, but among them were barracuda, clown fish, flute fish, and a leopard shark. After returning and getting my nice little piece of paper that says I went scuba diving for a day, I started walking to Long Beach, where the rest of the group was sure to have successfully booked a place this time. We spent the rest of the day relaxing by the beach and eventually went to bed early, as everyone by this time was suffering from their own ailments. By this point on the trip, Jon's fair complexion has turned a lovely deep red, Scott's ear has become mildly infected, Ryan has managed to sprain his ankle, Rory is keeping himself well occupied in the bathroom after putting to much spice on his dinner, and I have received a number of minor physical injuries over the past week, including two bumps on my head, two skinned elbows, a skinned shoulder, and numerous cuts on my feet from both wearing, and not wearing my crappy flip-flops that I bought in Bangkok, which broke four days after I bought them. Fortunately, we all had a great time documenting Ryan shoving Scott's Katadyn water purifying bottle into his ear to try and flush out earwax.
July 19
Today we relax in the morning, before heading to the ferry to Krabi, and then take an overnight bus to Bangkok. Fortunately this trip actually goes quite smoothly, and we arrive early in the morning in time to get a few hours of sleep before we start the day.
July 20
After a few hours of sleep, eventually everyone crawls out of bed and we set out to see the city. We spend about as much time getting screwed by tuk tuk drivers as we do actually seeing things, but ultimately it was a successful day. After our first tuk tuk driver takes us to the wring place, we are fortunate enough to find we are where still in a good area. One man tells us where there are things to see, and then follows up by telling us we should take a tuk tuk to see everything. We all knew he was just trying to sell us another tuk tuk that would take us to who knows where. We start to walk to one place, and eventually another man tells us what to see, but is much better at telling us what is going on and selling us on the tuk tuk. He explains today is a Buddhist holiday, and all the sights are free, and the government is paying for the gas for the tuk tuks, so we can get a tuk tuk to take us around for 2 hours for only 10 baht! What a deal. We don't know where we are going anyways, so we go for it. Fortunately, our two tuk tuks actually take us to places we want to go. We see a giant Buddha statue, and a couple of temples, one of which has the Black Buddha, which is a very old statue. We go back to our nice tuk tuk drivers, and they insist on taking us to a tailor. Crap. They plead to us and say that if we only go and look, they get free gas, and then they will take us to the next place. At this point, we don't really have too much of a choice, unless we want to negotiate a whole new price or ditch the tuk tuk to walk. We agree, but apparently we didn't stay at the tailors for long enough for them to get their free gas, so we reluctantly agree to go to one more tailor, where we spend 15 minutes looking at fabrics and stuff we have no intention of buying. Finally, they take us to the Marble Temple, which was partially under renovation, and mostly closed off to the public because it is actively used for prayer by Buddhist monks. Next, the tuk tuk driver insists we go to one more place, a souvenir shop, before we go to the rest of the places, and after a but of yelling they assure us it would be the last place they would take us and would then take us to all the other places we want to see. We agree, we stop pin for a few minutes, and leave. They next take us to the Golden Mount. On the way, we pass through an intersection where a police officer points at both our tuk tuks and yells. Our driver seems to ignore him and continues down the road. We are now clearly being chased by the police on motorcycles. The tuk tuk that Scott and Rory are in pulls over at a gate, but our driver continues for a while longer, before attempting a U-turn. Our driver is instructed to go back to where the other tuk tuk stopped. We exit and go on our mary way to see the Golden Mount, which offered great views of the city and its own temple at the top of a large artificial hill. Upon our return, our tuk tuks were gone, probably arrested for something, but I have no idea. We were taken to a number of places we didn't want to go, but we saw a lot that we did, and we didn't have to give the tuk tuk drivers a single baht, so we're happy. Tomorrow we hope to see more, but we ended the day a little early to see the shops. Ryan and Rory wanted to see the tailors, to take the opportunity to buy cheap suits here. Scott also wanted a suit and was looking for more solutions to his ear problem. I needed a new pair of sandals before Bali. Now we are back at the hotel for a quick rest before we hit the town again for the evening. Tomorrow we'll have to see the palace and whatever else we can see. The day after we fly to Bali. We seem to be just missing disasters in the news here and there. The bombing in Mumbai happened just a few days after our arrival in Thailand. The King of Thailand is currently going through spinal surgery, and we are now going to Bali only days after the recent tsunami hit Java. I haven't been able to find out if it affected Bali at all, but it doesn't seem to be listed in the areas hit. The thought occurred to me we might be close enough to the disaster to help, but without speaking the language or really knowing anything, I think we'd more likely just be in the way and labeled "tsunami tourists." I guess we'll find out more when we get there.
The sun is out, its a beautiful day. Our ferry ride to Koh Phi Phi is relaxed, everyone sun-bathing on the top deck. The islands in this area are incredible. All of them are giant rock cliffs, eroded at the base from the ocean with dense vegetation huddled at the tops. The Island itself finds habitable area with relatively flat ground and protection from the seas on an isthmus between two larger land masses. The town on the island still shows signs fro the Tsunami, with a lot of reconstruction going on. Thin pedestrian ways are lined by shops, restaurants, bars, hotels, and dive centers. Not a full width road exists, and save fro a couple of motorbikes with side carts, there isn't a powered motorvehicle on the island. Transportation to other places on the island, such as long beach, can only be done by either navigating backwoods paths, rocky beaches at low tide, or by a long-boat taxi ride. We spend the remainder of the day exploring the main town a little and relaxing.
July 17
Today we have scheduled a tour on a long boat of Koh Phi Phi Leh, an uninhabited neighboring island. The long boat is essentially a sampan. A long wooden boat, probably of a traditional fishing boat design, the boat's engine must compensate for the boat's length and turning radius by putting the prop at the end of a long shaft that stretches from a giant engine block on a swivel at the back of the boat. Our tour consists of swimming in an inlet on the island. The fish are everywhere and brightly colored and the water is more clear than pool water. Our next stop is a little back door passage onto the main part of the island. The main beach area is a popular place and boasts the location for the filming of "The Beach," and for one reason or another, they charge 200 baht just to visit the beach. By taking this back entrance, we avoid the fee, and at the same time, have an excellent time navigating under a cliff and through a tiny cave entrance, as waves threaten to slam us against the underside of the stone faces. Fortunately, a series of ropes provide something to hang onto when a wave that could potentially knock you violently into a wall rolls through. Once through the tiny hole, the violence of the waves gives way to a peaceful forested area, protected from the ocean by giant rock walls. We explore the area a bit before returning to our longboat, via the hole of erupting ocean water. Next we go back to Koh Phi Phi Don, the main island, and before we end our trip, we go to Monkey Beach, which is a tiny little strip of sand next to some dense forest where lots of monkeys go, probably more because of the frequent visits from tourists throwing bananas to them than anything else. Upon our return to the main island, we begin searching again for lodging, because Ryan and Rory have fallen in love with Long Beach, which is a larger more serene beach up the coast. Unfortunately, if you don't want to walk for 25 minutes on backwoods paths, up and down steep muddy hills, or along a beach of slippery rocks at low tide, the only way to get there is via longboat. For this reason, I felt it was better to stay and just visit long beach for the beach, since everything else was here in the main town. After wasting the afternoon trying to figure it all out, we ended up back at the same exact hotel we started with. Fortunately we were able to enjoy our evening. We had dinner off the beaten path in a back alley at a quaint little place. We sat at two of the three tables they had, on plastic stools. We shared the tarp sheltered space with the kitchen area, next to a pile of wood. It ended up being one of the best and cheapest meals we had. After some relaxing time, we went to a few of the bars. Hippy's bar was right on the beach, and from our beach side seats we watched with clear view a very impressive fire show. It started with a girl awkwardly moving small torches around, but it soon erupted into a full acrobatic and choreographed show, with flaming staves and fireballs. A good way to end the day.
July 18
Today I started nice and early, to get to my Discover Scuba Diving course. The rest of the guys decided they would rather save their money, but for $75, I had to take the opportunity to spend my day underwater. After a couple hours of training video and basic instruction and a boat ride out to Koh Phi Phi Leh, I was 12 meters down, staring fish right in the face. At first it seemed communication was a bit difficult, with the instructor making wild hand gestures to two of the girls in the group, as if yelling with his hands, but eventually everyone got the hang of swimming and dealing with the regulator and following the hand gestures. Our first dive was in a more gradual sloping environment, with small intermittent reefs. The second dive took us along a sea wall full of life and all kinds of odd creatures. There are far too many fish to name, but among them were barracuda, clown fish, flute fish, and a leopard shark. After returning and getting my nice little piece of paper that says I went scuba diving for a day, I started walking to Long Beach, where the rest of the group was sure to have successfully booked a place this time. We spent the rest of the day relaxing by the beach and eventually went to bed early, as everyone by this time was suffering from their own ailments. By this point on the trip, Jon's fair complexion has turned a lovely deep red, Scott's ear has become mildly infected, Ryan has managed to sprain his ankle, Rory is keeping himself well occupied in the bathroom after putting to much spice on his dinner, and I have received a number of minor physical injuries over the past week, including two bumps on my head, two skinned elbows, a skinned shoulder, and numerous cuts on my feet from both wearing, and not wearing my crappy flip-flops that I bought in Bangkok, which broke four days after I bought them. Fortunately, we all had a great time documenting Ryan shoving Scott's Katadyn water purifying bottle into his ear to try and flush out earwax.
July 19
Today we relax in the morning, before heading to the ferry to Krabi, and then take an overnight bus to Bangkok. Fortunately this trip actually goes quite smoothly, and we arrive early in the morning in time to get a few hours of sleep before we start the day.
July 20
After a few hours of sleep, eventually everyone crawls out of bed and we set out to see the city. We spend about as much time getting screwed by tuk tuk drivers as we do actually seeing things, but ultimately it was a successful day. After our first tuk tuk driver takes us to the wring place, we are fortunate enough to find we are where still in a good area. One man tells us where there are things to see, and then follows up by telling us we should take a tuk tuk to see everything. We all knew he was just trying to sell us another tuk tuk that would take us to who knows where. We start to walk to one place, and eventually another man tells us what to see, but is much better at telling us what is going on and selling us on the tuk tuk. He explains today is a Buddhist holiday, and all the sights are free, and the government is paying for the gas for the tuk tuks, so we can get a tuk tuk to take us around for 2 hours for only 10 baht! What a deal. We don't know where we are going anyways, so we go for it. Fortunately, our two tuk tuks actually take us to places we want to go. We see a giant Buddha statue, and a couple of temples, one of which has the Black Buddha, which is a very old statue. We go back to our nice tuk tuk drivers, and they insist on taking us to a tailor. Crap. They plead to us and say that if we only go and look, they get free gas, and then they will take us to the next place. At this point, we don't really have too much of a choice, unless we want to negotiate a whole new price or ditch the tuk tuk to walk. We agree, but apparently we didn't stay at the tailors for long enough for them to get their free gas, so we reluctantly agree to go to one more tailor, where we spend 15 minutes looking at fabrics and stuff we have no intention of buying. Finally, they take us to the Marble Temple, which was partially under renovation, and mostly closed off to the public because it is actively used for prayer by Buddhist monks. Next, the tuk tuk driver insists we go to one more place, a souvenir shop, before we go to the rest of the places, and after a but of yelling they assure us it would be the last place they would take us and would then take us to all the other places we want to see. We agree, we stop pin for a few minutes, and leave. They next take us to the Golden Mount. On the way, we pass through an intersection where a police officer points at both our tuk tuks and yells. Our driver seems to ignore him and continues down the road. We are now clearly being chased by the police on motorcycles. The tuk tuk that Scott and Rory are in pulls over at a gate, but our driver continues for a while longer, before attempting a U-turn. Our driver is instructed to go back to where the other tuk tuk stopped. We exit and go on our mary way to see the Golden Mount, which offered great views of the city and its own temple at the top of a large artificial hill. Upon our return, our tuk tuks were gone, probably arrested for something, but I have no idea. We were taken to a number of places we didn't want to go, but we saw a lot that we did, and we didn't have to give the tuk tuk drivers a single baht, so we're happy. Tomorrow we hope to see more, but we ended the day a little early to see the shops. Ryan and Rory wanted to see the tailors, to take the opportunity to buy cheap suits here. Scott also wanted a suit and was looking for more solutions to his ear problem. I needed a new pair of sandals before Bali. Now we are back at the hotel for a quick rest before we hit the town again for the evening. Tomorrow we'll have to see the palace and whatever else we can see. The day after we fly to Bali. We seem to be just missing disasters in the news here and there. The bombing in Mumbai happened just a few days after our arrival in Thailand. The King of Thailand is currently going through spinal surgery, and we are now going to Bali only days after the recent tsunami hit Java. I haven't been able to find out if it affected Bali at all, but it doesn't seem to be listed in the areas hit. The thought occurred to me we might be close enough to the disaster to help, but without speaking the language or really knowing anything, I think we'd more likely just be in the way and labeled "tsunami tourists." I guess we'll find out more when we get there.
posted by James Dixon at 12:02 AM
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