Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Full Moon - Koh Phi Phi
So last I checked in I was preparing for the Full Moon Party...well preparing as much as you can. Megan and I tried to nap, but the gosh darn ocean at our front door kept us awake! I started the night off like any true athelete: Carbo-loading. Had a complete meal pasta and mashed potatoes mmmmmmm. Then we hit Had Rin in true F.Mooner style, with classy buckets of whiskey, sprite, and redbull. The beach was packed. Not only do you have everyone on Koh Pha Ngan at this party, but there are speedboats coming from Koh Samui every 15 minutes bringing in more partiers. You couldn't find a place to stand on the beach amongst the throngs of flourescent-body painted people dancing on the sand to dance, techno, pop, R&B. Jon, Jen, Megan, Christine, Heather and I decided to take in the beach scene by heading down to the Mellow Mountain Bar at one end of the beach. Its not really mellow, and not really on a mountain, but provided incredible views of the craziness that is the Full Moon Party. The rest of the night was fun. Danced with people, lost people, met people, crashed into people...its all part of the fun. Us girls had to meet our taxi at 6am that morning to get off the island though - so we went home and packed at 5am. And then began our epic travel journey.Just so you can get a sense of what we went through with ZERO sleep and 2 buckets in our system, our next 14 hours went like this:
hike - taxi - boat - bus - taxi - wait at a random restaurant - bus - boat - boat - hike.
And looked like this:
At the end of it we were on Koh Phi Phi, the AMAZING island off the Adaman coast. Although not before we got caught in a huge storm off the coast of Krabi that caused waves to go over our boat (and in through the many cracks) and made your stomach jump every 3 seconds. Needless to say everyone was feeling a little vominos!! The same storm caused us to have problems trying to get a 'boat-boat' to our beach on Phi-Phi, with no roads you have to take longtail boats everywhere, but with the waves no one was willing to go to Had Yao. So we had to go around the island and hike over to the beach. We sure deserved our air-con/4 person/hot-shower/beachfront bungalow that night!!!
I don't want to preach about the lasting affects of the 2004 Tsunami.... But you can still see the affects of the destruction on Phi-Phi Don. It's sorta like the re-development stalled after 6 months or so. While I was down there I read an article saying that international Tsunami relief donations totalled around $7,000 USD per person affected. At least on Phi-Phi I didn't see anywhere near that put back into recovery. It's such an incredible island that I hope that when it does get back into developing its tourism infrastructre that they do it right without overdevelopment like we saw on Koh Samui. Ok sorry, that was a little bit of preaching....
Our three days there were incredible and SUNNY (rare in their off season). It was topped off by our trip over to the national park of Koh Phi-Phi Ley. What a stunning island. It's like Cape Town, you can't believe such immense natural beauty exists even though its right infront of your face! We took a sunset cruise over there, stopped off at Monkey Beach, where dozens of monkeys came out to meet us and eat our bananas. It was there I learned that my ass looks just like a piece of banana because I literally had to fight off the monkeys who kept grabbing it!! We went over to Pilah Bay where we got to kyak around the huge lagoon with sheer 10 storey rock faces plunge into the sea. It was so....just so ahh! Then it was over to Maya Bay, the famous location where the Beach was shot in 1999. Now I'm really starting to think that Richard, Etienne, and Francoise had it easy getting to their secret beach. A few miles of swimming, a drug field or two and a simple plunge off a huge waterfall. EH Whatever!! When we went the sea was still too stormy to get into the bay through the Western opening. so we pulled around the backside and had to dive in the water off the boat and swim over reefs to a cliff face with a small patch of not-so-sharp coral that only sorta-cut Christine's feet. The waves would push you up the slippery coral and you had to find some way to navy-seal your way up. Then through a small cave and up a waterfall to the 5 minute hike into the backside of Maya Bay. It was so worth it though - the empty bay was so incredible, and the perfect backdrop for a TB2BThailand photo shoot!! After 1/2 hour it was back on the boat for some GREAT fried rice and back onto Phi-Phi Don where us girls celebrated our last night together with the Full Moon After Party at Hippies Bar. Megan and I attempted the drinking contest that involved lots of running on the beach and drinking alcohol in various containers. We wern't much of a match for the 4 other teams of boys. It was much more fun to settle onto our beachmat table and watch the fireshows.
I left Phi-Phi VERY reluctantly the next day and while we left Christine and Heather tanning on the beach Megan and I endured a ...ahem...nice... 30 minute hike in the midday heat to Ton Sai through the jungle, mud pits, across beaches and into town. But I still loved every second of it and i'm seriously thinking about heading back in September. Plus we never found Harvey!!!
Just a few photos are up - I don't want to give away the farm! Check the rest out on my webshots album
# posted by Laura Davies : 12:42 PM
