CRAZY JOURNEY: DAY 16 - PHUKET TO KO PHI PHI

Dave and Fintan on Ko Phi Phi Don

We all had an early start at Patong Beach in order to get ourselves onto a boat for Ko Phi Phi Island. This was an absolute struggle after our night at Aussie and Puma bar. Dave and Finto as usual led the charge, while Rhys was at his morning finest. It is truly a scary creature to behold and we are all becoming experts at the fine art of coaxing it from bed against its will!

Dave at Patong Beach

Patong Beach is quite a hectic place with non-stop offers for the infamous ‘ping-pong’ shows, massages, go-go dancers, taxis and anything else the locals can sell to you. These guys don’t seem to understand the word no which got to us all a bit. As well as this, the taxi, tuk-tuk and scooter drivers just seem to continuously beep their horns for no apparent reason adding to the madness. As far as we know, this is quite the norm throughout Asia so we better start getting used to it! While the place is interesting we were all really excited about getting on the ship to Ko Phi Phi.

The Phi Phi Islands are located between the large island of Phuket and the western Andaman coast of the mainland. There are two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is the larger and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is smaller and uninhabited. Ko Phi Phi Leh was the backdrop for the movie The Beach. We are planning a day trip there during our stay.

The boat journey was an hour and a half from Phuket and this time wasn’t wasted one bit with plenty of bronzing being achieved and Dave putting in a lot of early spade work with some girls from Liverpool that are also staying on the island, it just never stops!

Chuck organized us some great accommodation when we arrived and we wasted no time getting down to the beautiful Long beach for a swim. It was really bizarre swimming there and picturing that exact spot as one of the worst affected areas from the Tsunami disaster in 2004. It was really hard to comprehend this calm beach as being completely wiped out by an 18ft wave and imagining that all the buildings such as restaurants and hotels around us have all been rebuilt since the disaster. By the end of July 2005, an estimated 850 bodies had been recovered from the island and an estimated 1,200 people are still missing. The total number of fatalities is unlikely to be known however local tour guides cite the figure of 4,000. By the end of July 2005, 23,000 tonnes of debris had been removed from the island, of which 7,000 tonnes had been cleared by hand. Today, nearly 1,500 hotel rooms were open, and a tsunami early warning alarm system had been installed by the Thai government. We all find the whole place to be really peaceful with no cars or scooters present at all on the island and a much less aggressive attitude from local sellers.