Koh Phi Phi

After Chiang Mai, we headed south to Phuket and Koh Phi Phi. We flew this time, which was convenient. We arrived in Phuket for a night and stayed at a brand new nice hotel, but the town really wasn't anything spectacular (maybe we were just in the wrong part?) We walked around trying to find a restaurant for dinner and there was nothing but bar after bar and sketchy massage parlors. We finally found a perfect place with an awesome bakery. There were actually good bakeries and desserts throughout our trip, which was an unexpected surprise.

The next morning, we took a 90 minute ferry ride to Koh Phi Phi Don, an island out in the Andaman Sea. The boat ride was hot and miserable, but totally worth it. We read our books and tried to stay hydrated.

The island is incredible - lush green with crystalline waters. It's made of limestone and surrounded by other smaller uninhabited islands.

We finally arrived!

Since there are no roads on the island, we had to take a long-tail boat to get away from the busy harbor and to our quiet resort on "long beach"

We stayed in these bungalows

Our beach was nice and quiet. It had a few VERY small resorts and there was hardly anyone staying at any of them. We practically had the place to ourselves.

 We even spotted a monkey on the beach

My Thailand travel book had a picture just like this on the cover. I used to pick it up and think "if only the water was really that blue." Here I am, eating my words.

There was basically one restaurant on the whole beach, and it was at a neighbor resort. We ate there about 6 times and it never disappointed. It was only about $2.50 for a meal there and the view couldn't be beat!

They had good pineapple fried rice

And banana pancakes with chocolate sauce

We think this is a cable car that they used to use to get up the mountain

Tan and I were reading on the beach and looked at each other to talk. This little guy had snuck between us and we both shot out of our chairs in surprise

One day while we were there, my dad and I went scuba diving. It was a lot of fun because we were almost the only ones in the group. This is one of the islands that we dove by

The coral there was amazing - much better than Hawaii. We saw spotted rays, seahorses, lion fish, box fish, eels, and even SHARKS! They told us before we left that they sometimes see them at the dive sites we were going to, and i was hoping we would see them. These pictures are actually from the Manila Ocean Park (we went diving too deep to take our underwater camera), but you get an idea of what we saw.

 

 While we were diving, Tanya and my mom got seaside massages, drank smoothies, and relaxed. They were too relaxed to even take pictures.

It was fun to just play in the ocean. Even though we had been living by it for the past year, we are never sick of it.

After just three short days, we took the ferry back to Phuket for one more night before heading to Bangkok and then home. We did some shopping and my parents took us to a fancy restaurant for some awesome food and desserts.