Andaman Adventures

Way early on in the year I took stock of the limited amount of three day weekends I have. In Thailand we actually get a pretty decent number of extra days off, but they often will not reserve the day next to a weekend. Back in October I bought myself tickets to Phuket. After Bangkok, the other two major vacation destinations in Thailand are Chiang Mai and Phuket. Chiang Mai is a city in the northern mountains, while Phuket is an island with beautiful beaches in the south. Phuket seemed like the perfect place to spend the first weekend in December, I would be able to get one last blast of beach and sun before returning to the states for the holidays.



We ultimately decided to spend the majority of our weekend on Koh Phi Phi, a little island a two hour boat ride from Phuket Town. Like Phuket, in the past few decades Koh Phi Phi has steadily been growing in popularity. Koh Phi Phi was rapidly being built up with little regard to preserving the natural beauty of the island with a hodge podge of resorts, dive shops, and restaurants. Then, in December 2004 Koh Phi Phi was wiped out by the tsunami. 40% of the people on the island died and the entire infrastructure was destroyed. I've read that since the tsunami a little more care has been taken while rebuilding island. The main town on the island is bustling today, crammed with all those restaurants, dive shops, and hostels that were there before.



While we ventured into the main town several times to shop and eat, we actually ended up staying on a quiet beach called Long Beach. Our resort was made up of a bunch of bungalows of varying degrees of luxury. We chose the least classy option but were still really happy. The weather was actually rather cloudy and even rained (poured) while we were there, but we still spent a decent amount of time lying on the beach or in hammocks and swimming in the clear blue water.



On our second morning we rented a longtail boat for about $12 a piece to take a trip to the nearby island (uninhabited) of Koh Phi Phi Le.



Koh Phi Phi Le has been a popular day trip location since "The Beach" with Leonardo Di Caprio was shot there. We circled the island slowly, going into inlets and passing by caves. I've posted a clip from the boat in the entry below this one. We were able to jump out of the boat twice to go snorkeling. I haven't been snorkeling in about 15 years so I found this to be very exciting. So many colorful fish swimming were around in the coral! Maybe next time I'll do the shark watch snorkeling trip...



We also stopped by "The Beach" where the movie was filmed. It was incredibly crowded with people, speed boats, long tails, dive boats, and cruisers with upwards of 300 people aboard. Yuck.



We had intended on heading back early on our third morning to Phuket, but decided that Koh Phi Phi was not to be rushed. We took the afternoon boat back and hit Kata beach around 6 pm when the sky was darkening with rain. So all I got of Phuket was some terrible Mexican food and this beach shot: