We're Coming Home Again

Yesterday, as mentioned, we went to Phi Phi Islands, or Koh Phi Phi as the locals know it. You take a 1½-hour cruiser ride to the island for 250baht or S$10 return.

Aboard the Phi Phi Cruiser:


Tim sleeping (as usual) while we travel towards Phi Phi Don, the main island in the group:


Some island we pass along the way:


We make a stop just before we reach Phi Phi Don to let off passengers who signed up for the boat tour onto a smaller boat:


The two of us looking shit while grabbing a photo op:


As we approach Phi Phi Don, we spot this deserted stretch of beach with a lot of snorkellers and dive boats around the area. We decide that that’s where we wanna be:


Phi Phi Don:


Parasailing on the side of Phi Phi Don where they filmed that silly Leonardo DiCaprio movie, The Beach:


As soon as we looked around and discovered that the beach on Phi Phi Don was covered with more White tourists baking in the sun, we hired a motor-driven sampan to take us to the small stretch of beach we spotted earlier:


The beautifully secluded portion of beach we landed on:

Funnily, when we told the boatman to take us to the beach, he said to us “Go see monkey!” and we declined, thinking that he was offering to take us somewhere else. In fact, he was informing us that this was the part of the island that tourists came to watch and feed wild monkeys! One pawed at my bag when we just entered the waters to go snorkelling, probably hoping to find something yummy. Thank god they didn’t run away with any of our stuff!

I told Tim not to feed the monkeys but did he listen? Of course not!


I found a swing and tested it out… Not very glamourous is it?


The beautiful waters:

After two hours of snorkelling and basking in the sun, the boatman came back and took us back to Phi Phi Don where we had lunch at a tiny eatery.

Looks like they had a memorial service for the lives lost in the Tsunami on 26th December 2004:


A plea to the Prime Minister from the residents of Koh Phi Phi, demanding to know why their islands have not been restored as promised after the Tsunami:


The new Tsunami Evacuation Route signs you can now find all over Phuket and the other affected islands:

We stepped back onto Phuket at around 4pm and decided to spend our last night in Patpong. We headed out there by tuk tuk as we had already returned the bike and went for oil massages at a decent massage parlour with friendly masseuses. They massage you naked with scented oil in these dimly lit rooms with soft music playing so much so that it was almost a turn on! I almost dreamt of that sexy guy we met at the YHA Hostel! After that, I wanted to have a nice dinner of Thai food at a proper restaurant and had to plead with Tim to go with it. He finally agreed but I wished he had enjoyed the food as much as I did. Hope the ice-cream sort of made up for it!

Tim with his Corona, and my Pina Colada:

We went back after one last look at all the shops and packed. We settled in pretty early that night for our early flight this morning.


This time, we flew with JetStarAsia and it was just like Valuair (well obviously since they’re now owned by the same people). And like my Valuair flight to Perth, the plane was half empty:


Singapore!

Photos hosted by: www.flickr.com

My return home is bitter-sweet because while I’m happy to be back, I still wish that I were swimming in the waters of the Andaman Sea and watching the beautiful sunsets.