Day 24 - Round the World 2008
Our second day in Ko Phi Phi and the sun was blazing. I staggered from our dank little room into the glaring sunshine reasonably early to have a little scout around for somewhere nicer to stay. An added bonus to this was that I could buy a sneaky little banana and nutella pancake from one of the many stalls and eat it on the way. Normally I'd have to bypass the amazing little things because they all serve peanuts and there isn't exactly much in the way of cleaning between each serving, but with no nut-averse Cat around I could chomp away! I did feel a little guilty, but sorry to say it only lasted as long as it took the first forkful to hit my mouth. I walked on in a daze of banana-chocolateyness.
I looked around for ages trying to find somewhere nice for under 1000 bhat but eventually after about 2 hours gave it up as a bad job. I had come across a place earlier in the morning, though, that was pretty luxurious compared to our usual pads and thought it might just be worth the extra outlay. I walked back to our current lodging, picked up a Cat and went back along to give her a look. 30 minutes later and we were moving our bags in, 2400 bhat lighter but revelling in the first Air-con we'd experienced since Bangkok and a room three times the size of our previous.
After laying around for a good couple of hours enjoying the cool air we decided to head back out into the sun in search of a quieter beach than yesterday. We'd chatted to a guy in Ko Tao who had told us about a suitable candidate by the name of Long Beach - a quieter stretch of sand with a couple of restaurants and a beach bar which could only be reached by long-tail boat. We had heard there was a walking trail round the coast though which we thought worth a try so we packed up the bag with towels and sun cream and headed east along the sand. The trek was quite good fun actually, following steep trails through the forest and passing random little collections of huts along the way. It took nearly an hour and culminated with a pretty sheer drop which had suspect looking mud and tree root steps cut into it. We gazed out from the cliff at the amazing beach, decided it was worth it and then spent 20 minutes lowering ourselves down the crazy staircase. I only landed on my ass a few times though and we exited onto the beach with barely muddy shorts and smiles on our faces.
We spent the afternoon there drinking fruit smoothies and swimming around in the ridiculously warm water. I rented a snorkel and had a go paddling around the bay but my snorkel was slightly defective and I gave it up after my third lungful of water - The fishes had swum off ages ago anyway after my first sea-water induced coughing fit, but at least I'd seen a few bits of weird coloured coral.
After a suitable amount of skin-damage we packed up the bags and made for home. We discovered that we could make our way around the rocks of the coast because the tide had gone out a little and it ended up taking us only about half an hour to get back. I was loving it too, looking in every nook and cranny for crabs and beasties like the big 10 year old that I am. I don't understand people that talk about growing up, kids have far more fun than us. Does jumping around on rocks ever get less fun?
That night we headed into town for our now-standard meal of 1 Thai Curry I haven't had yet and 1 meal that wont kill Cat, ie. Pizza. In anyone else it might have become an annoyance only having one choice every evening, but Cat's appetite for Pizza is boundless. Phi Phi's supply of ham, pineapple and dough continued to be decimated as we scoffed our way on.
That night we found a new bar down a previously unexplored alleyway after hearing some hugely loud and pretty good music from the other end. We made our way down and discovered a pretty large place with a huge stage at one end, looking a bit more like a pure music venue than a bar, but it was free in and the music sounded good so we grabbed some Big Changs and found a seat among the hordes. The band, "Made in Thailand", turned out to be awesome and we stayed a good 2 hours listening to their mix of covers, from old school rock to new metal. They did some crazily accurate covers of ACDC and Guns and Roses before moving onto some amazing, slightly changed versions of Ramstein and System of a Down. They were asking for requests the whole time and must have known a ridiculous amount of songs - nearly every time they played the requested band straight off. A highlight near the end was Rage against the Machine's Killing in the name of. The 20-stone, long haired tatoo freak who had been shouting, "Rage! RAAAGE!" for the last half hour promptly jumped up, surged to the front and proceeded to decimate the mosh pit, hurling man and woman alike onto tables, through chairs and dangerously near the feet of the singer. Everyone was loving it though and the singer laughed his ass off and only sang harder.
After the gig we staggered home, ears a-ringing and singing away to the tunes still playing in our heads. I had decided that I'd forgive Phi Phi it's stupidly busy beaches and unashamed sales pitch as long as it kept feeding us the Thai boxing bars and crazy rocking bands.
South East Asia
