ferry ride to Koh Phi Phi
01.01.10 - first day of the new year! We woke up early to have brunch with the group and check out to catch our noon flight to Phuket. Leaving our glorious resort was sad but we were ready to experience other beaches and part of Thailand. We had a 40 minute flight to Phuket, but true to Thai form, we were still served drink and food (albeit frightening) on the flight. The best part was not only still having remnants of the night before paint still on our bodies but seeing all of the other hung over, previously painted on full moon partiers at ther airport as well.
Due to our exhaustion and lack of plans we decided to stay in Phuket town for the night to regroup so we could be ready for Koh Phi Phi island the next day. We found a cute backpacker hostel with a fun vibe and showered and headed out for some food. The town was creepily quiet since everything was closed for new years day, but we meandered around and enjoyed the interesting sights, stores, smells and people Phuket town had to offer. After being visually bullied out of a local noodle place (only white people wandering around the entire day) we opted for a British run cafe with all sorts of food and tv playing BBC news to feast.
The rest of the day was spent napping on the comfy couch in the living room in from of a large tv with friends rerun playing (mostly me) and/or planning, researching, calling, reading lonely planet and looking at stuff online for our next few days accommodation in Koh Phi Phi (thank you Marisa and Jill).
01.02.09 - woke up early, had delish breakfast made by the nice women at our hostel (for about $2.50) and made our way to elephant trekking. The place we went to featured elephant treks and other sorts of adventure tours and monkey and bird shows, but we were just excited to see the elephants. They were super cute and it was fun riding on them for the half hour we planned on but it was definitely sad to see them stuck in the little jungle trekking yard area.. And of course the guilt sunk in because tourists like us are the exact reason the wild animals are exploited to begin with... So we made ourselves feel only minimally better by feeding them fresh pineapple they were selling, which looked tastier to us than the palm leaves they were snacking on. The baby elephant there even repayed us for our tasty snack with big sloppy kisses on our cheeks which was super cute.
During our ride back we got a tour of the west part of Phuket island, which features the beach resort areas of the island so it was nice to see the rest of the area but we were anxious to get to our 1pm ferry to get to koh phi phi.
Enjoyed the sunshine and socializing the top floor of the offered as well as the tasty ice cold changs we have become so fond of.
Made it to our hostel which was all the way through the windy streets of the busy beach town, it was set high within the hills of the island. Had cute little bungalows, small green watered pool, small cafe/restaurant and tattoo parlor (naturally next thing on the list, right?). Our rooms were cute little log cabins in the trees, reminded us of Swiss family Robinson. Town pretty much consisted of windy streets from one edge of the water to the other filled with bars, cafes, restaurants, beach shops, dive shops, hostels, tour companies, Internet cafes, massage places ($6 for one hour massage), small shack sized jewelery and souvineer shops and open market style food places (which most smelled horrible - nothing appetizing about raw meat sitting out in 90+ degree weather).
No time to shower ( well and we were adapting more to the no worries/lazy/ island-backpacker-traveling way of life ) so we headed out to shop and eat before meeting up with some Welsh travelers we met on the ferry. Had a fun night out in Phi Phi, and even without the influence of thr buckets we still managed to have a big night til late in the night.
elephant trekking in Phuket
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