Phuket og Phi Phi

I love Thailand! However, I have only been to Bangkok before, so this time we desided to try Phuket, wanted the beach! Only thing is that we were going in August, and as you probably know that is the rainy season then. We were staying in Patong and we figured out very quickly that the "city center" and Patong beach there was not the best at all. After day two we were pretty fed up with it all.

On the day of our arrival we just had a quiet evening with dinner and drinks, and to be honest the quality of the food was very good. Both of us love Thai food doh, you need to like spises in order to eat the thai food they serve, all though I think they make it a lot milder at the restaurants because of all the tourists.

So the day after we went to the beach, Patong Beach, yuck! That beach  I would not recomend to anyone, and after a couple of hours there Liam was stung by jelly fish three times, really neede to go somewhere else. Luckly there is several  beaches to choose from in the area. We went to Karon Beach and that was a lot nicer. The waves there were quite big and there was some strong curents in the water so I would not go there with small children, looked like people knew that because it was more or less only adults at the beach.

Even though we knew there was a lot of nice beaches in the area we could go to during the day time, we were kind of fed up with the Patong area at night time. We did have a good time in loads of the bars there, but as I said we felt we had done it all within two days. Second evening we went to an Irish bar, had a few drink, played some pool and then went to a Thai bar where we played games with the laydies working in the bar. You loos every time you play agains them, think it is kind of how they earn a bit extra money. Its easy games as well, like try to kock the nail into the wood with fewes hit and so on. But the girls are good so they normally win. Its fun though!

So, we are in Phuket and a little bit bored, what do you do? You go to Phi Phi island!!!!! Getting there is very easy and you can organise it all through most of the hotels in Patong, otherwise there area always a kind of a tourist information that will help you with all the bookings. We had one of those just next to our hotel so we let them arrange transportation, taxi to the pier and boat over to Phi Phi, boat is about 500 baht if you arrange it yourself. The boat takes about two hours. We went online and booked a hotel, however, that can even be booked at the arrival pier in Phi Phi, a lot more to choose from then that it is online. When we left Phuket it had started to rain a little bit, so I was a bit surprised that when we arrived Phi Phi, the weather was like this..............

Arriving at our destination we neede to get to the hotel and thankfully there was a person from the hotel who met up with us and walked us over to the location. It was up in the mountains, and the view was beautiful.

Our room wasn't that great, but it was really cheap and we were ment to stay there for only three days. Was kind of fun as well getting the feeling that you were somewhere deep in the tropical jungle. I was a bit conserned about meeting snakes outside or even worse inside our bungalow, however that did not happen. 

The weather the first day changed from sun to rain, to sun to rain again and by the time we were on our way down to the main street it had rained a bit so there was a lot of mud on our little path taking us down to the "village". Of course I was wearing flip flops so my feet looked like they had been through war when we sat down to get dinner and drinks, and later on played a bit pool as we always do:)

Phi Phi Don was initially populated by Muslim fishermen during the late 1940s, and later became a coconut plantation. The Thai population of Phi Phi Don remains more than 80% Muslim. The actual population however, if counting laborers, especially from the north-east, from the mainland is much more Buddhist these days.

The islands came to worldwide prominence when Ko Phi Phi Leh was used as a location for the 2000 British-American film The Beach. This attracted criticism, with claims that the film company had damaged the island's environment, an accusation the film's makers contest. The film's release was attributed to an increase in tourism to the islands. Phi Phi Leh also houses the 'Viking Cave', from which there is a thriving bird's nest soup industry.

Ko Phi Phi was devastated by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, when nearly all of the island's infrastructure was destroyed. As of 2010 most, but not all, of this has been restored.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Thai boxing is of coures very popular in all the tourist places i Thailand, and Phi Phi is no exeption. Every night there were boxing matches, for tourists and for proffesional Thai boxers in one of the local bars which had a boxing ring inside it. It was fun to watch it a little while but I don't think I will make it my favourite sport anytime soon.

Ha, ha, ha........................... No I didn't do it!!!!

As I mentioned in the begining we were ment to sat at Phi Phi for only 3 days, but we liked it so much we decided to stay a few days longer. With that decided we neede to find a new hotel/bungalow to stay in. We knew just tha place we wanted to check out!

This place is just beautiful, well, at least we thought so, even though the bungalows were very minimalistic and small on the inside, the outside and location was just perfect. It wasn't that expensive either, we paid 750 baht a day. It is also located on the quiet part and the most beautiful beach in Phi Phi (when you get of the boat, all the hotels, bars, restaurants and shops are either straight ahead or to your right, this is onthe left side a small walk towards the big mountain).

So we ended up staying an extra 3 days in this place because we liked so much and we really didn't want to stay another 5 days in Phuket. The hotel we had in Phuket knew that we were at Phi Phi, and it is quite normal that people leave some of their belongings (clothes etc) at the hotel room and leave it for a few days, that is if you have paid for it of course.  

The small beach outside our bungalow is not the most popular one, that is about 5-10 minutes walk across the island, it is very small so you can walk everywhere. We did go to that one as well, but it was a lot of people there and we actually fancied the one outside our bungalow more.

See the blue towel I am laying on, it came with the bungalow and it is the biggest beach towel I have ver seen, it was so comfy, loved it!

We didn't lay on the beach all the days we were at Phi Phi, we did have some days with clouds and some rain so during that time we was just walking around exploring the place. There are so many cute restaurants, cafes, bars and shops on that little island so you really need to go for a few walks around the place and see some of it. Think you manage to see it all if you want. Also, all around the place you find many funny signs!

In the evening time everybody is out, either at bars, clus or restaurants. A lot of people were also just walking around from place to place, meeting up in the streets for a beer and a chat. We went to several places and one night there was a firedance show at the main beach. only got one picture from it as we were busy trying to wake up this really drunken girl who was sleeping on the beach. Would not recommend people to leave behind friends that are extremely drunk to sleep on the beach. Kind of cruel to do that, would never do that to any of my friends. The girl was find in the end, and this is the picture we got from the great fire dance.

Not much for us to see after that so we went for dinner and drinks, as we did every evening:)

Buckets are very popular all over Thailand, and you normally get the local vodka or whiskey in it. It is strong so be careful of how many you drink. They have a tendency of leaving you with a really bad hangover the next day as well. 

What do you do after a few buckets? You go to the tattoo place! We didn't intend on going there, we just passed by and then we started looking at different tattoos and talking to the guys who were working there. Got a bit carried away and we got them to draw up a few tattoos for us. Thank good we were a little bit sensible and decided that we did not want to get any tattoos when we had been drinking. However, we did say we would come back the next day!

We went back and guess who got a tattoo? Me! And not the one above, that was for my hubbie, but I didn't like it that much so he didn't get one.

I am very glad I wanted to be sober when I decided to get the tattoo, on the other hand it hurt like hell in some of the places so then I wish I was drunk. But it was all worth it (one and a half hour in pain) and till this day I do not regret it. Will I recommend others to get tattoos on holidays? Most likely not, because there are so many people who do it when they are drunk and regret it later. If you want to get a tattoo, be 100% sure you want it.

The next day it was time to hit back to Phuket/Patong as we only had two days left before we were heading back home to Norway. Had to do some shopping before we left. And have a few more of the local Thai beer!