Koh Phi Phi

 We flew to Phuket on Thursday afternoon, but after a late, leisurely breakfast, we didn't have as much spare time as we might have. Hotel check out was followed by a small public transit adventure: I had convinced Matt to give the train a whirl. Since we'd been so successful navigating to the temples, he agreed that maybe it wouldn't be the absolute WORST thing to take the train/bus to get to the airport. I am happy to report that it took us less time via train/bus than it did via metered taxi! So I am allowed to continue making transit plans...

The day was mostly a wash of us getting to the airport, flying to Phuket, taking a taxi to our hotel (the airport is at the north end of Phuket, the ferry terminal - which we were planning to use - and town are located at the south end of the island, so it was nearly a 2 hour taxi ride in traffic), and then me banishing Matty from my sight. His appropriate response was to go for a nice, healthy run. I sat by the pool and read my book. Healthy on both sides of the coin! Perk of sending him out of my hair was that he came back to the hotel with good ideas about where to go to dinner, so off we went!

Delicious seafood dinner, lovely stroll through the markets of Rawai Beach, and then off to a late night swim in the hotel pool and then bed. Next morning was spent, again, by the pool. It was so serene, with lovely lounge chairs all about, an in-water seating area with jets for back massage, and beautiful green tiles. I'm low-key obsessed with the tiles, actually. If ever the day comes that I have a pool of my own (hah!), it's going to be tiled with green tiles like these ones. And hopefully I'll have arranged for Dad to be my Yard Wallah to maintain all the lush greenery that will surround this future dream pool. Dream big, no?

Rawai Beach after dinner

Phuket hotel with the best pool

Phuket pool

Green tiles

Smoothie at the ferry terminal

So anyway, morning spent at the pool, chilling out, relaxing all cool. Then another taxi to the ferry terminal to take a speed boat ferry to Koh Phi Phi. For anyone who, like me, isn't familiar with Thai nomenclature: Koh just means Island. So it gets left off a lot of the time. And Phi Phi is pronounced "pee-pee" just as Phuket is pronounced "poo-keht", not "foo-keht." So we took the ferry to PP and man, the views. 

Phi Phi harbor

On our longtail taxi to the resort

That's our beach shack! 

So I booked our place in Phuket. It was a little Airbnb joint, and it said in the instructions on how to get to it that we just needed to find the guy at the boat harbor with a sign for Viking Resort. We didn't think we were staying at a resort, we thought we were staying in a "Fisherman's Shack" on the beach, but whatever. Turns out that our shack is the little forgotten step-sister accommodation at a lovely resort! So I don't know whether it was once the caretaker's place, or if they just didn't build it fully to code so they can't claim it on insurance, or goodness knows what, but the place is decidedly located at a resort, but wasn't listed on any of the "how to find your room" directories nearby. We had to ask. It had its own outhouse, if it was located much closer to the water it would have been UNDER water, and we had a regular supply of local dog and cat visitors on our porch. In short: we loved it. The day we arrived, Matty tried to extend our stay (to no avail, alas). 

Good morning!

From the porch bench, with our hammock in the background

Welcome!

Our front porch

Hammock views

Walking to the sandy beach from our shack

It was a magical little place. I can't tell you how many hours I spent in the hammock or on the porch, reading books, staring at sunsets, watching the water change colors throuhgout the day. It was so beautiful, and peaceful despite the longtail taxi boats driving by at all hours. ALL HOURS. Also, forwarned is forearmed: somehow on this trip I turned into a person who takes photos of cats and sends them to people. We made SO MANY cat friends. 

Locals

Views on the walk to town

Kitty visitor on the porch

Not cats.

I love this photo because Matty and the cat look equally baffled

I couldn't tell you most of what we did in Phi Phi. We spent one day scube diving (which was really lovely, despite the wildly lax safety practices that confirmed for me that we wouldn't be doing a second day of diving in Phi Phi), but mostly we just hung out. Beach days, wandering around the island. We hired a "glass-bottomed" kayak so we could check out the corals one afternoon and spent two hours at constant risk of capsizing. We spent a morning hiking to the island's viewpoints. 

When we couldn't extend our stay at the fisherman's shack, Matty tasked himself with finding us a new place to stay. Short version: it was a disaster. Halfway up the mountain, pool was green with algae, dirty room. We stayed one night and then boogied; Matty is no longer allowed to book accommodation without supervision. 

The "reservoir" our new accommodation overlooked

Because we nixed the accommodation Matty booked, we needed a new plan. Enter my research from before we left ("if you spend any more time doing research, you'll have spent more time on the internet than we're going to spend in Thailand!" - Matthew). New plan: go to Khao Lak, mainland Gateway to the Similan Islands, the best diving Thailand has to offer. Plan made, Matty decided he wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate Thailand. He wanted a bamboo tattoo, or what I'd have called "stick and poke" because it doesn't use the electric tattoo gun. Just a dude with a needle that he pokes into you. Repeatedly.

Tattoo parlor cat loved Matty

Our last morning in Phi Phi we had a few hours to kill. I really liked the tattoo Matty had gotten. The shop was open again. So... sorry Mom. 

Now I match my brother! And cousins!

Mikey, the tattoo artist

Anyway, that was the last thing we did before hopping on the ferry back to Phuket, and then on to Khao Lak!