Phi Phi Island - where you START the night by hugging a bucket

Thailand is a great place. hot and humid all year round, with the occasional rainfall that will drown you if you get caught in it. Generally exceptional food and cheap beer mean that tourists (like myself) love spending time here since it wont cost an arm and a leg, but you can still have a great time.

This is basically Thailand in a nutshell, but there are parts of Thailand that attract more than the usual number of tourists, and Phi Phi island was one of them. We just left the island this morning, after spending about 5 nights there in a nice, clean little guesthouse... which had a pool! sure the pool was green, but just dont put your head under and everything is fine.

The island is like a magnet for people between 20 and 30 who have a grudge against their livers or something, since everyone there went out every night and got completely smashed on the cheapest alcohol we have encountered yet. All the local bars and shops sell 'buckets', which are literally just a little bucket with half a bottle of spirit, a can of softdrink, and a small red bull all poured into it. oh, and it comes with a straw just so you can look classy when you try and drink it. kate and i didnt buy one ourselves, but we saw the consequences of what happens to people who did. one morning there was a person passed out outside a chemist, lying on the concrete, with his belongings all falling out of his pockets.

There are more bars than any other type of business, and plenty of sober young tourists to fill them all every night. every night there was some new party on (full moon, half moon 5/13 moon, etc) and every bar had some kind of happy hour that went pretty much all night. fun place, but surely there is more to do on the island than just drink every night?

Well there is. there's diving. Kate and I took our new snorkeling equipment and headed out to Long Beach, which is a half hour walk over the rocks around the coast. At Long Beach we snorkeled for an hour or so, and in that time we saw a total of 5 Black Tipped Reef Sharks, the biggest would have been about 2 metres in length. we saw one up really close, about 5 metres away, and boy these things look scary. It doesnt help that you know they are harmless, just the shape of them and the way they glide through the water is menacing. amazing experience to say the least. we also saw a few trigger fish and were almost thrown against some rocks by the strongest current we have swam in yet.

The beaches on Phi Phi are very beautiful, though the closer you look the more rubbish and broken glass you see. darn tourists. The rest of the island is like a construction zone. There are many new buildings going up all over the place, mainly replacing the ones lost in the tsunami 4 years ago, but there is also some new development. Despite the tsunami being so long ago, just walking around the local town reminds you that it happened. There are still piles of rubble and junk everywhere which are yet to be removed or rebuilt, and home made memorials of the day are in most restaurants. People seem optimistic about the future however, and its obvious that their tourism industry is still flourishing.

The food on the island is great on the whole, as long as you dodge the usual pizza places and irish pubs. One major recommendation we came across from anyone we spoke to was a thai place called Papaya, which sold meals for no more than about $3 australian, and a serving was about the size of your head. in particular, the spicy beef or chicken salads are amazing, and the masaman curry was great too. was really nice to finally have some spicy thai food that really filled you up. (note, we only thought to take the picture on the right after eating the thing for about 5 minutes. yeah, its a big salad.)

On the whole, I think Phi Phi is a place we wont ever return to. There are other places which are better to go diving in, and have more entertainment options other than drinking and diving. We had some fun there, and having our own little pool was really nice too, but it was time to move on. Now we are in Krabi, on the mainland of Thailand, and we will hopefully be heading to Koh Samui (OH YEAH) in a day or two.

till then, i hope sydney is really, really, really cold. ill be thinking of you all while i work on my tan.

//Brendan