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Other entries in Koh Phi Phi

sharks, climbing and adventures aboard the pornare

We had a really brilliant time on Koh Phi Phi. Its beautiful there. Its quite a small island made up of two parts connected by a thin strip of land, so basically there are two big bays very close together. The town is concentrated along this strip and its so narrow that you can almost look across from one beach to the other, if you see what I mean. There arent any cars or scooters, which makes a nice change. The sea is very warm, today is was about 32 degrees (really!). Its very clear and calm and the snorkeling is very good. If you walk into the sea you can see fish swimming about your feet. One morning we went out to this one reef where we saw at least 6 blacktip reef sharks, it was amazing. Theyre so cool and the adults were quite big. They dont hurt people, actually theyre scared of you but theyre inquisitive and some of them swam right up to us. We also rented a kayak for the day and paddled round the island. We went to monkey beach for some snorkeling and saw several ghost pipefish. Thats what we think they were anyway, they look like sea horses without fins. There actually were monkeys at monkey beach too. There were several baby ones and there were some tour guide people feeding them bananas, it was really cute. Its definately not a good thing that they feed them though. Some of the males were quite aggressive and we saw them attacking some people.

At the western end of Ton Sai beach theres a big cliff face with lots of climbing routes, so you can imagine weve been spending lots of time there. We met this guy called Shamik who lives in a tent at the bottom of the cliff and spends all his time climbing and rebolting. At dinner we would meet up with the climbers at Cosmic resturant where they always hang out. Shamik told me hes rebolted over 200 routes here and at Railay, which is pretty impressive (obviously not by himself). Yesterday we met a croatian guy and his brother and climbed a route using our stuff. Afterwards we went out with them to a couple of bars. At Reggae bar (which couldnt possibly have less to do with reggae) we watched some thai boxing and some stupid westerners making idiots of themselves for the sake of a bucket. The croatians were very unimpressed with the nightlife, but it was funny watching them try and chat up all the english chavs.

We also visited another smaller island near by called Phi Phi Leh on a longtail trip. Longtails, incase you dont know, are wooden boats that the locals use to get about. Our boat was called pornare, much to Roberts delight. Phi Phi Leh doesnt have any people living on it, its just covered in jungle. The beach there is amazing, but sadly when we went, there were so many people it just ruined it. Thats the place where the movie "the Beach" was filmed, so people come to see it on day trips from all over. It was sad to see so much rubbish floating in the water and on the beach, but I was suprised the coral was in OK condition. We went over to Bamboo Island on the same trip too. It started to rain so we all went back to the boat and huddled under the tiny cover thing. Instead of going home though, our driver/guide/fisherman guy decided it was time for a "rest" and sat smoking out of a giant bong for about half an hour. Kindly he offered us some too, including a family with kids! He seemed confused that no one liked this idea.

Were off to Krabi now by ferry and then onto Railay for some more climbing. We were only going to stay on Phi Phi for a couple of days but it was such a cool place we ended up staying more than a week.

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