Phuket Town and Ko Phi Phi

I’ll try to recap the last few days without going into too much detail; it feels like we’ve been in Thailand for much longer than a week and a half. On Monday morning we took a taxi through most of southern and eastern Phuket to Phuket Town. Phuket Town has a much different feel to it than the touristy beach towns. We were some of the only tourists there and a lot of things were closed down during the low season. This gave us the chance to experience Thailand in a more authentic way. Phuket Town is a large town with a lot of large shops and even a large mall. While we were walking around a group of children got really excited to practice some of their English and everyone was very friendly saying hi and smiling. We had dinner at a more local place than the touristy restaurant’s we’ve been drawn to.

On Tuesday morning, we came to Ko Phi Phi on a ferry. The boat was full of tourists from all over the world and a lot of large tour groups. When we got off the boat we were greeted by a “taxi” driver with a sign for our bungalows. He loaded our stuff into a large metal wheel-barrow like thing as well as one other persons stuff and a washing machine. He starts pushing this through town and through his broken English we’re told he’s bringing us to a truck. After about fifteen minutes of walking through town while this poor guy struggles to push this 300 pound load in 90 degree weather, we get to a large hill and Dylan helps him push it up to the truck. The small truck can barely fit everything plus us into it and we start to go up the hill backwards as we get up speed we begin to roll forward but we made it up. Our bungalows were
set in a hill with a view through the trees of the ocean. Pretty basic places with a bug net to keep the spiders away from Dylan (more likely for mosquitoes but this put Dylan at peace of mind). We spent the first day on the white sand beach full of tourists all around our age. The water isn’t quite as refreshing as you’d want on a 90 degree day, it’s probably in the 80s but it was still absolutely beautiful.

Dylan's fear of the large spider the size of my hand in our bathroom made for a move to Marine House, a guesthouse in the center of town. After moving in yesterday we went up to the viewpoint. Although it was overcast yesterday, it was still pretty hot hiking up there. The viewpoint was absolutely beautiful and well worth the effort. The pictures looking down on Ko Phi Phi are all from the viewpoint. Today has been
the first day we’ve actually felt like it’s monsoon season. It’s been raining all day with sudden showers that are like nothing I’ve ever seen. We were thinking about signing up for snorkeling today, today would not have been the day for it.

Ko Phi Phi really appeals to people around our age it’s full of bars and plenty of people handing out fliers or trying to sell you on a scuba or snorkeling trip; this is probably how people get their visa’s to stick around Ko Phi Phi. The town is small and although my sense of direction is lacking after a few days here I can manage my way around on my own. It’s full of small shops, restaurants, bars, day trips from the island, and plenty of internet cafes. There’s no “motorbikes” instead everyone walks or bikes around. The bikers and plenty of the wheelbarrow-taxis do their best to make you feel you’re in a city by constantly saying “bip, bip” to let you know to get over to the side of the path. At night the town becomes full of loud music and there’s even a bar with a kickboxing ring, if you box someone you get free drinks. The beaches are lined with BBQs and fire throwers. It’s a place I can see why people get easily sucked into it, it’s so laid back and beautiful. Tomorrow vacation comes to an end. We leave for Rawai tomorrow to meet up with our group to start our TESOL course. We look forward to meeting everyone and finding out more about what we’ll be doing. No luck keeping this short but we’ll try and write more often so they’re not so long.