Phi Phi Island(s)

Last year when we came to Phuket, we took a day trip to Phi Phi Island. Here's a link to last year's trip. It was so beautiful that we wanted to spend a couple of nights on the island this time. The one thing we didn't like about the trip last year was the very bumpy speed boat that took an hour and fifteen minutes to get there. This is how much Morgan enjoyed that trip last year:So this time we used a regular ferry that took two hours and it was so smooth. Save yourself a headache, and perhaps save your breakfast as well by taking the regular boat when making this trip! Here's a picture of our ferry from the trip... the one with the #3 on it.

Unloading on the dock from the ferry

We were amazed at how clear the water was and how many fish there were right next to the boat as we docked.

Is it ironic that two of the most beautiful islands are named Poo-ket (Phuket) and Pee-Pee (Phi Phi)? Our girls just loved saying the names and being creatively silly with the names. They picked up on it all by themselves.

Phi Phi is actually two islands... Phi Phi Don (the bigger) and Phi Phi Leh (the smaller). We went to Phi Phi Leh last year and hung out on Maya Bay where the movie The Beach was filmed, but there are no hotels on this island. Phi Phi Don is a bit bigger and has 10,000 people on the island at any given time. We went to Phi Phi Don this time.

There are very few cars on the island... they just aren't needed. After we booked our place, a delivery guy came to pick up our bags and escort us to our place. The girls loved the ride!

There are a couple of big hotels, and everything else consists of bungalows and tree houses. This place is a backpackers' paradise. Here's our tree house that we stayed in...

The "hallway"

View from the hallway... the beach/water can be seen in the distance, about a 5 minute walk.

Did we mention that we stayed at a backpackers treehouse? Tim loved the lock to the door. Look closely...

Ok, here's a close up. Yup, it's a luggage lock... ingenious!

We brought a queen-size air mattress on our trip for Adayla and Tally to sleep on. After moving the desk and chair out of the way, it just barely fit in our room. For this place, with hot water and air conditioning... it was still $40/night.

Here's the check-in desk and the the bar. In backpacker fashion, you can leave your luggage right there after checking out.

After getting situated, we headed over to the beach. We were EXTREMELY disappointed and wondered why anybody would ever come to this beach...

But then the water came back later in the day...

Fortunately this was just low-tide. When the tide came back in it was nice. We're just glad that Phuket's beaches don't go from nice to "unswimmable" because of the tide.

Phi Phi Don is shaped like an "H" with two long, skinny mountains on the vertical lines connected by the flat/beach area where the hotels/shops are on the horizontal line of the H. It just such a unique and beautiful form.

There is a stairway up to the top of each of the mountains where you can get high enough to see how the island is shaped. We chose to climb the mountain closer to us with its 305 stairs. Here are the girls at the beginning of the path up. The blue sign behind the girls signifies that this is a tsunami evacuation route.

We stopped half-way up for a picture...

Then the stairs got a bit steeper.

But no matter, the girls climbed every stair all by themselves!

The tricky thing was that even so the stairs were done, we were really only about half way there. The path which then started was sometimes steeper than the stairs we took.

Tim stopped to get the girls a fresh coconut.

That's as high as he got. Perhaps if he had been wearing jeans he would have gotten up there.

One of the really interesting things was to see the fallen coconuts sprouting into new coconut trees. Tim's holding one of those with the girls.

The view from the top was so worth it. Here you can see Phi Phi Don's "H" shape, Phi Phi Lei is very close there in the left part of the picture.Some family pics...

This was an interesting guy. He lives at the top of peak and is the person in charge of the emergency supplies in case of a tsunami. His additional duty is to run a shop to sell water/snacks. So he just hangs out in his hammock until somebody wants a drink or needs to use the bathroom. Our girls have become so used to saying "hi" and taking pictures with strangers, that they thought nothing of hopping up on the hammock and swinging with him.

Here's the sign on the building...

After the Tsunami of December 26th, 2004, they take emergency prep pretty seriously here. Here's zoomed in picture of the inhabitable area of Phi Phi Don:

After the tsunami, 70% of the buildings were destroyed. The estimate is that 4,000 of the island's 10,000 tourists and locals died on that day. Only 850 bodies were recovered. In all, over 300,000 people died on that day in the region because of the tsunami.

A picture as one of the tsunami waves came through Phi Phi Island...

This picture was taken the day after. Nothing was left except a couple of the big hotels...

Walking down the mountain... Ryann loved the bounce of each step down the hill.

The one good thing about the dramatic high and low tides is how many seashells can be found during low-tide. Here the girls are finding shells before dinner...

Lots of fun restaurants to choose from...

and great food to choose from. If we could get fresh seafood like this on a regular basis, we definitely would eat more fish. Not normally fish fans, but this was just so incredibly good...