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Other entries in Koh Phi Phi

Ko Phi Phi Island

Next stop was "The Beach" Island of Ko Phi Phi with its amazing eroding Limestone cliffs. (now so popular after the movie that you cant actually see the actual beach through the line of jet boats and there is a 200B landing fee to step foot on the beach).

Ko Phi Phi is one of Thailands many National Parks that the govt has allowed tourist development on. Of course regulations are ignored or non existant so beautiful rainforest and untouched beaches are being relplaced with badly planned human developments. There is no motor vechicles however, and you walk through the maze of narrow street past all the little shops dodging the locals on bicycles.

For 300B a night we stayed at a place called "Banana" in a dark little room with the std toilet bowl / bucket and a cold shower owned by a "Crazy" (and greedy) toothless old Thai woman who took our washing for 40B a Kg (std rate) but soaked all the clothes in water before weighing them, and we had to run round finding the bits that had not been returned or put in other peoples bags. The beaches looked like paradise, though if you looked closer there was a lot of rubbish lying around & went for a first swim to discover that 3m off shore there was an ominous brown sludge floating on the bottom and surface of the water. Not wanting to think the worst Dave checked with a Thai barman on the beach who pointed out the public toilets (aka stinking seatless toilet bowl shack) just off the sand.

Apparently the govt provided funding for a sewerage system to be built but the money disappeared and the basic storage pit that is there is not being used. "Too many people using the toilets" was the barmans comments.

Did a daylong dive trip out arround the surrounding islands, the highlight of which was seeing a turtle, among other facinating underwater creatures and a Kaleidoscope of fish and plants. On surfacing through 10m of water though, we were disgusted at the amount of rubbish suspended through, and floating on the surface of the water. The divemaster explained it was from the fishing boats that just dump all their rubbish overboard.

The Sunday was Dave's 28th birthday, and we had double reason to celebrate, as got confirmation that the sale of our house in NZ was confirmed. We met up with another NZ/Oz couple that we met on the boat (Stu & Kate) and checked out the nightspots on offer. (Everything from Hippy bars on the beach with red lights swinging from trees, to sleazy nightclubs with no toilet doors so you could see guys peeing from the dance floor. We ended up at a place that was offering various drinks deals with free buckets at midnight (NB-A bucket is a container filled with Ice, local rum, red-bull, coke, and whatever else with a handful of straws poking out the top) The night ended around 3am but not before showing the locals how to boogie NZ/Oz style, while covering each other in glowpaint (which materialised from somewhere) It was time to call it quits though when a European couple joined in and tried their best to pick up me an Stu.

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