Last few days on Koh Phi Phi and Phuket

Here we go again...

01/02/08
Rick was woken to matthew fumbling about the room (trying not to wake him but obviously did!!) as he prepared to depart early for his scuba diving trip so here he his to recall the story for you....

At 7.45am I leapt out of bed feeling rather excited and headed down to the Baracuda diving down by the pier of Koh Phi Phi. By this time the sun is already blazing. As I arrived into the shop I was introduced to my diving instructor for the day. Her name was Daria (a very attractive blonde girl orginally born in Georgia). She ran through the itineary for the day before we departed out to the boat. At this point I had an intoxicating feeling of both nerves and excitement but was more than ready to go ahead. After around 15-20 mins we arrived at our first dive site just of a small island off Phi Phi called Koh Boda. Upon arrival we talked me through a couple of the exercises that would initally get us into the water (and under it breathing normally). In order to dive we spent around 10 mins going through the equipment before climbing into a wet suit and loading myself with oxygen cylinders and a weight belt, and of course a mask. Once complete I was ready to jump. At this point I literally felt like I was walking the plank as I approached the edge of the boat wearing flippers. Once my vest was inflated I took the plunge. Obviously at this point I floated back to the surface where Daria joined me and prepared to lower ourselves a metre or so under the water to perform the procedure of clearing my mask from leaking water (without coming to the surface). Once I had successfully performed the procedure we began the dive. Metre by metre we went down stopping every few 10-15 seconds to make sure I was equalising my head. Without doing this I would have had serious issues with my ears. For some reason the conventional way didn't seem to work for me (holding nose blowing out) , however I found swallowing seemed to work. Before I knew it I we were swimming around 11-12 metres below the surface faced with a variety of corals, lionfish (nasty if touched), clown fish (nemo), baracudas, pufferfish, and variety of weird and wonderful coloured tropical fish all of which were suprisingly curious to our presence. After around 50 minutes (which seemed like 10) we slowly headed up the side of an underwater cliff to the surface where we waited around 5 minutes for the boat to find us and pick us up. We then had lunch jumped into the water a few times (generally just messing about) then we headed over to Phi Phi Ley for the second dive. At this point feeling much more confident, I found I relaxed more and took in a lot more of my surroundings. At one point we spent around 10-15 minutes around a piece of rock to look at a very rare fish known as the frogfish. Apparently on any future dives I perform I will be very lucky to see them again. This was the first time my instructor had ever seen them (and she has performed well over 1000 dives in her career).
After about an hour we headed back to the surface and again waited for the boat to pick us up from floating in the ocean.

Overall this was a fantastic experience which I will definately be doing again. I'm just very pleased that i've done it and I can now approach any future diving sessions with confidence and a basic knowledge of what to expect.

Hi it's Rick again, after that thrilling tale of Matt's experience's, I'll tell you about my day! I got up, had some onion soup, spent 4 hours on the internet trying to upload photos (which I failed miserable at!!) and then went to the beach to wait for Matt to get back!! I can honestly say it was my most favourite day so far!! :-(

That evening we met up with Kurt again (the guy who introduced us to the 9 Aussie chicks) and he said that he was going to see thet Thai boxing at the local stadium with Yen (yet another barman we befriended). The Thai boxing was great but matt felt a little tired after his scuba experience and departed at about 11pm. Rick, Kurt and Yen stayed until the end and then Rick and Kurt went to a bar to carry on drinking. Now it was rick's turn to do the early morning waking (payback)!! At around 3am Rick came home with no intention of waking Matt (yeah right!!) but we both slept very soundly. We're both now used to the time zones and most morning have been up around half 8 - 9am.

02/02/08
Rick falt a little worse for wear but we went for brunch and then just chilled on the beach for the rest of the day. We met up with Kurt again and he offered to meet up with us when we get to Adelaide (as this is where he lives), which was very nice of him! That evening was a quiet one but we met a Danish bloke called Tom who was really nice as well.

03/02/08
Another chilled day on the beach (we kept threatening to go kayaking but never actually did!!). I personally blame the unpredicatble tidal movements as it was often quite a walk to the water's edge!! We had been given a flyer for a restaurant called Talay and decided to check it out. It was a bit of a walk but well worth it!! It was run by a Paddy called Paddy! Who'd have guessed!!?? As it was our second to last night we decided that we would go out on the town. We went to a few bars, an outdoor club (it's like a bar on the beach where you can sit or go inside where the music is really loud!!) and then to a bar called Hippies bar which is open really late and is really chilled out.

04/02/08
Again feeling a bit precarious in the morning (Matt blames the RedBull which is non-carbonated and tastes like syrup!!), we headed for the beach to drink lots of water. Low and behold Kurt was already there waiting for us. We recalled the previous evening antics and drank more water! We spent our last night on Phi Phi with kurt in the Ciao Bella Restaurant (literally 3 steps from the Beach Bar!!!) where we chatted. Kurt learned a lot about the UK that evening and was stunned to find out that Manchester is actually a distance from London (not in East London as he pointed on a map that Rick drew!!) We also learned much about Australia and again Kurt suggested we meet up. We naturally said "definately"! We left early as we had an early start the next morning to catch a boat to Phuket.

05/02/08
As in previous posts, the reason we stayed longer on Phi Phi was due to the bad things we have heard about Phuket, oh and the fact that Phi Phi is beautiful!! The boat journey took about an hour and a half. Upon arrival we couldn't check in until half 12 so we decided to locate food. On the way a guy on the street asked if we wanted a taxi. Rick said no as we were going to look for food. He suggested a place and said that is was cheaper than most places in Phuket and a lot of people go there! Lies, all lies!!! The place was dead and the prices were more than double what we've paid elsewhere (we paid 8 pounds each for lunch!!). Naturally a little annoyed we headed back to check in. Upon reflection we think that it might get busy in the evening and with a huge selection of seafood (lobsters bigger than your arms, tiger prawns the size of your feet and spikey lobsters that looked pretty nasty) we can now see where the attraction comes from. Parts of the restaurant were more like and aquarium!! We got back to hotel which as worked out at 4 pounds each (more like a travel lodge than a hostel/traveller's hotel). We decided to lap it up for a couple of hours int he air con and watch some TV. After a film (Predator 2) we went for a wander to quite an impressive shopping mall. Rick bought some new "Boardies" (long swimming shorts for the English people back home) in preparation for his Surfing in Perth. We then had a beer and scoped out somewhere to eat. The general consensus is that we would like pizza!!! So off we go!

Thanks for tuning in! Speak to you all soon!

Rick and Mattxx

P.S. as an additional note we would like to say that there is a lot of development going on in Koh Phi Phi in the wake of the Tsunami in 2004. There are mixed feelings about this from the locals, some feeling that they prefered it before as a tropical paradise, others who prefer the fact that tourism has brought lots of money to the island and others (who knew Phi Phi before and after the Tsunami) who think that both have been good for the island. Our view is that it is a fantastic place that everybody should experience! If you want the tropical paradise then you can find it here in Phi Phi! If you like going out for a drink and meeting holiday makers and travellers alike, and don't mind people trying to sell you things on the streets, then it caters for that too! All in all we loved it and can see why people decide to stay! We hope that the development doesn't take over and spoil the traffic free tranquility of the island but we're glad to seeso many people from different walks of life enjoying this paradise.