Koh Phi Phi, Thailand

Monday

After a hearty breakfast we caught the bus to the airport to catch the flight that would take us to our next continent, Asia.
Our flight on Malaysian Airlines to Kualar Lumpur left at 2pm, was 11 hours long and we would arrive in Malaysia at 7am there time on Tuesday morning. This meant we would miss out on a whole night’s sleep. Oh well!

The flight was very nice and we managed to watch 4 films, which made it go very fast. We even got ice cream!

Tuesday

When we arrived at Kualar Lumpur, which by the way is a very nice airport, we had a short 2 hour wait before hopping on another quick flight to Phuket airport.

Our view from the plane coming in to land at Phuket

From Phuket we caught an hours long ride to a pier where we waited another 3 hours before leaving on a boat headed towards Koh Phi Phi, our final destination. The boat seemed to take forever and was crammed with tourists with everyone’s baggage piled high in a corner.

After about 2 and a half hours on the boat we finally arrived at Koh Phi Phi island where we had a 5 minute ride on a long boat, which took us to the bay where we are staying. Phew, what a mammoth journey that was!

The island is gorgeous and very green and lush. The weather isn’t amazing but it’s a very nice warm temperature. It has generally been nice during the day and then in the evening and night some beautiful thunderstorms light up the night sky.

The beaches are all lined with beach bungalows, shops and restaurants. Our beach hut is right infront of the beach with a view of Koh Phi Phi Leh, the neighbouring island where Maya Bay can be found. Maya Bay is a popular beach enclosed by huge rocks and was made famous in Danny Boyle’s film The Beach.

Our room looks out on to the island with ‘The Beach’

For the rest of Tuesday we got aquainted with where we were staying, had something to eat and then fell asleep by 7pm. We were awake for lots of the night then fell asleep early morning and didn’t wake up until 11:30am!

Wednesday

Having missed breakfast, we pretty much went straight out to lunch. Afterwards we sun bathed on the beached for lots of the afternoon. In the evening we took a walk along the coastline to the main town, which is very busy and has hundreds of shops, restaurants, dive centres and tour operators.

The long boats line the shore and are used by tourists to get to and from different bays.

Visiting the main town

Walking on water

Star(fish) jump

Wohoo I can fly!

On the way back the tide was out so we were able to walk really far out into the sea. It was amazing! It must have seemed like we were walking on water to the people back on shore.
When we got back we had dinner. Thai food is so nice! Pad Thai….mmmmmm! Not only is it so tasty but it’s also rediculously cheap!!!

Mmmm, Pad Thai!

After dinner we both had an hour’s long massage in the spa area along the beach from our bungalow. Again it was so cheap! We felt very relaxed afterwards, all the tension and stress that had built up from relaxing on the beach was soon gone

For part of the massage, you were stood on by a Thai lady!

Thursday

We went on an all day boat trip today that took us to some beautiful beaches and coves as well as giving us the opportunity to do some snorkelling above the coral reefs. As there was a bit of a wind, the sea was a bit choppy. One of the gilrs on the boat was actuallly sick, oh dear. I on the otherhand was absolutely fine even though I can get sea sick quite easily.

Our first stop was Maya Bay, the beach from ‘The Beach’. It’s a stunning beach, which is almost completely sorrounded by huge rocks. The palm trees and clear waters make it really idyllic. If it wasn’t for the huge number of tourists that flock here daily, it would be a really nice place to spend the entire day.

Is that Leonardo Di Caprio? Oh no its Christian and Heidi on Maya Bay.

I’ve tried to quickly stitch some photos together so you can a better sense of how Maya Bay is enclosed by the sorrounding rocks.

Next we did some snorkelling where we saw some beautiful fish. I’m sure there are far better spots in Thailand though, and scuba diving is very popular and is also meant to be very good here.

Snorkelling Heidi

After the snorkelling we went to another secluded beach called Monkey Beach (we didn’t see any monkeys). After that we visited a couple more beaches, did a bit more snorkelling and then returned to our beach.

In the evening we had another cheap meal overlooking the beach and seafront.

Some more delicious Thai food.

Friday and Saturday

We didn’t have anything organised on these days and spent most of the day enjoying beach life. The light rain we often had didn’t stop us from enjoying the beach and we still managed to sunbathe, relax and have a few dips in the sea.

And now for some very funny frogs. You can’t see them in this video but they sound really weird don’t they?!

It’s amazing what technology can do these days too! We managed to speak to family from a tiny island in the middle of the Andaman Sea through a teeny weeny laptop! Amazing! As my Grandad would say, the mind boggles!

Heidi speaking to family.

We are now preparing for our flight tomorrow to Bangkok. Here we will join up with our group for our month’s tour round South East Asia.