2/24/10 - 3/6/10 Phuket to Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta

Welcome to our third country in one month: Thailand. I'll let you know right now it lives up to the hype.

We landed in Phuket (pronounced poo-ket, you cheeky devils), and checked into the On On Hotel. This was Phukets first hotel, built in 1929. What a crazy maze of a building! I wanted to play hide-and-go-seek soooo bad. It was also the hotel they filmed at for The Beach. Fun fact.

We spread out our maps, books, and notes to make our Thailand game plan. First choice: one day in Phuket was enough. We booked a ferry to Ko Phi Phi for the next morning. The highlight of our time in Phuket was using the Internet in an online gaming cafe. Ten preteens in one room playing online games with each other amid fits of sceams and wild laughter - intense but kind of hilarious.

Megan: "Thank god they didn't have any places like that when I was 12. My friends and I WOULD have been those kids."

Steffany: "Oh yeah. No good would have come of that."

The next day we were welcomed to Ko Phi Phi. Interesting place... Picture a college town on a beautiful island, with no college classes to get in the way of partying. That's what ko phi phi is. Yes, it's touristy, and steff and I are not party girl types, but it is really beautful there. No cars. Small enough to walk across the whole island. Very nifty.

We were here for 6 days. Much of our time was either spent lounging on the beach, eating, or walking around enjoying some truly great people watching.

The first day we walked up several hundred steps to reach "the view point." this is a high peek on the island where everyone gathers to watch the sun set. Everytime the breeze came, it blew the scent of all the floral trees around us. The view overlooking the island and surrounding ocean was spectacular by itself. It all grew more and more stunning as the sun set. Watching the sun set with a large group of people, in silence, whose top priority is just enjoying the beauty, was also really cool. I hiked back up to the top on a few other mornings. Steff, for some reason, doesn't agree that rolling out of bed and climbing up a mountain five minutes later is fun. Strange.

We decided to take a boat trip around to see some of the other places surrounding Ko Phi Phi. We now love boats. Everything is cooler and food always tastes better on a boat.

We were taken around to see: shark point (didn't see any sharks), bamboo island for a tasty fried rice lunch, monkey island (we didn't see any monkeys), and Maya Beach (where they filmed The Beach.)

Snorkeling was great in all of these places. We were surrounded by neon colored fish every where we were! They were the most insane rich colors that I never would have believed ocured in nature.

Although Monkey Beach had a disappointing lack of monkeys, it did have sand that felt like baking flour. We said they should rename it "Pastry Beach" and sell cupcakes. Maybe we just wanted to eat cake...

When we arrived at a rocky bay, the crew informed us that we had arrived at Maya beach. We had to walk across the island to the beach part. Simply jump off the boat and scuttle over those large slippery rocks... Oh yeah... Don't forget your flip flops so you can walk across the island.
"um.. How can we bring our shoes and swim to shore?"
::crew member puts flip flop on his hand and makes paddling motion::
Ah, I see.
The sight of 15 people doggy paddling to shore with flip flops on their hands, was harious. That in combination of all of us stumbling over the rocks was too much. Steff and I were cracking up. Many of the others were not. Next we had to hike across the island. Can you feel more ridiculous hiking while wearing a bathing suit and a snorkel mask on your head? No.. You can't... If only we had our snorkel fins on our feet, I would have felt like a character out of Monty pyhthon. Maya Beach, though a little touristy, was stunning. Huge lime stone cliffs surrounded us. The late afternoon sun cast a million shadows on the cliffs. We could have sat there for hours.

Good news: we used our camera to take underwater picutres all day, and it's still in perfect working order!
Bad news: we felt a little sad/ashamed to take every photo because, as always, the pictures don't do any of the scenery justice.
Bad news: our camera battery died RIGHT before the sunset on the boat.
Good news: we don't need any more sunset pictures and, again, it wouldn't have done it justice. This was the most perfect beautiful sunset. The sky and the ocean turned about 40 different colors every minute. All we could think or say was "this is so beautiful." Needless to say, we very much enjoyed the day.

Let me tell you something about the food on Ko Phi Phi: it's pretty spectacular. They're big on Nutella. We liked that. We liked that a lot.
Nutella banana pancake - even if the rest of the trip is awful, this will have made it worth it. So good we wanted to cry.
Nutella/butter French bread
The biggest portions ever at Papya
Pizza... That actually tasted like pizza.
Cheese pringels
Fruit shakes of every flavor everyday

The big Full Moon Party with a few thousand people is in Ko Phangan every month. However, due to our travel schedule there was no way we could make it over there in time, so we opted for the smaller full moon party in little ko phi phi. We had a huge meal at the famous back packer resturant, papya, to coat our stomachs for our first night out on the town since we left NYC. We attempted to pretty up. Then, fliers in hand (that are given out daily for drink specials), we made our way down to the beach. In our sober state it was stunningly hilarious. The whitest white boys dancing with glee inthe ocean, dirt cheap drink specials, and fire.

Fire: fire limbo, fire jump rope, fire shows, fire hoops. Fire. Everything there was SUCH a bad idea - but so fun.

We got the famous buckets (these are small buckets filled with soda and a small bottle of rum, vodka, or gin, and 4 straws), walked to the 4 different bar areas, danced, met a few really great people. I offered everyone I met a cheesy pringle. The night was so hilarious and fun. I didn't even hurt myself jumping through the fire hoop.

Needless to say, we took one more day in ko phi phi to sleep in/lounge on the beach eating mangos. I bought a cheap set of water colors, sissors, needle and thread in the hopes to sew something soon. Traveling in paradise is great and all, but we miss knitting.

After five days we hopped a ferry and said a warm hello to Ko Lanta. MUCH less touristy and quiet. We did make the terrible mistake of pulling out our guide books on the ferry to find a place to stay. Little did we know that bunglow/hotel owners walk up and down the ailses of ferry boats, binders of photos, pamphlets, and very long energetic sales pitches ready to go. With in ten minutes of leaving the dock our laps were covered in pamplets and our heads were spinning from 20 differtent sales pitches. I thought two people were going to battle it out to see who would get our business. Scary stuff. We decided on a bungalow that sat right on the beach for 300 baht a night (about $9).

The section of the beach we stayed at had some bungalows, 4 resaraunts decked out in huge lanterns, and that's about it. It was every picture of your own beautiful tropical beach that you paint in your head. Every spot along the ocean was gorgius. We drank a lot of fruit shakes, read, went for walks, I went for a morning run everyday.

Then we suddenly came out of our beach bum fog and realized we needed to book transportaitiin to Ko Tao to start our scuba certification. We took a horrifying tuk-tuk ride into town. Horrifying, because the woman driving let her 2-year-old kid wander around in the back of the cart and climb around on to the seats. We were convinced she was going to fall out onto the road the entire time. The little girl is also crying and climbing on me. Steff and I aren't really fans of being around children as it is - that ride didn't help.

We arrived into town, booked our transportation for the next day (a truck, to a van, to a bus, to an overnight ferry), and set out to find lunch. The misadventures of Megan and Steffany strike again. We walked along a dusty road for a long while until we spotted the ocean on our left.... And then saw it was on our right too. After looking at the map we had no idea (and still don't) know how this was possible or where we were. We picked the beach to the left of us and discovered civilization once again.

We spotted a tiny island while walking along the beach.

Megan: "Neat! I just want to swim out there an befriend a talking monkey!"
Steffany: "I bet there are giant rocks..."

This pretty much summed up the differences in our travel styles.

Pizza and milkshakes for lunch = happy Megan and Steffany.

Steffany: "I suddenly had a terrible vision of us walking back on that hot dusty road: 'Milk was a bad choice... UgGgghH!'"

We took a tuk-tuk back.

But not until we went for a wonderful long swim. We were so excited to see waves again, as most of the shore lines are very calm.

It was a sad goodbye to Ko Lanta. We would have loved to have spent more time there, but more adventures awaited us.

Next stop: Ko Tao, to get our scuba on.


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