KOH PHI PHI

On the second week of my holiday, I flew to southern Thailand to a place called Crabbe on the Andaman Sea, and caught a 2 hour boatride to an island called Koh Phi Phi (or "Koh Phe Phe", or "Koh Pee Pee", pronounced "Koh Pee Pee"). This island is everything you would imagine a tropical paradise to be: palm trees, white sand, tall cliffs, dense jungle, clear blueish-green water, incredibly hot and humid. Oh, and a few nude sunbathers to boot! All in all, an incredibly beautiful place.

They don't allow traffic to motor around the island, so accessibility is via these cool (actually steaming hot) walkways. Also, you can easily hail a motorboat taxi (like the one's pictured above on the beach) to take you anywhere on the island. You can find diving shops, restaurants, bars, shops, internet places, massage shops . . . virtually everything you'd ever need in a paradise setting.

Whenever you were overheated, it was easy to just jump into the water anywhere. And I did . . . I did! Very hot fetchin' place!

I bumped into a Brit in a beach bar, and he convinced me that I should try scuba diving. I had no idea that I would try this sport, but that very night I signed up. The next day would turn out to be one of the best days of my life. I did what is called a recreational dive. Very basic theory, then in the water. And I don't mean waist-level water. My first dive the instructor took me down to my maximum depth, 12meters, about 40 feet. And we didn't come up to discuss anything; I was down there for 50 minutes my first-ever F-ing dive!! He hangs onto you for the first little while, but then lets you go. The second dive, after a lunch and waiting period, he leaves you alone to enjoy yourself, as long as you don't go too low or high, and stay at instructor's depth.

This is where we did the first dive. This is the bay where "The Beach" was filmed with Leonardo Dicaprio, full of lagoons, beaches, and coves. Beautiful.

On the second dive we actually dove around one whole half of this other little island. We saw a leopard shark here, kind of wild, but later I found out they're pretty harmless.

This is the actual beach from the movie. If you see the movie you'll see palm trees on this beach, which were fake. There are plenty of palm trees on Koh Phi Phi, just not on this particular beach. They sell beer and food here at inflated prices (relatively, still far cheaper than Canada.). I hired a taxi boat to take me here the day after scuba.

Every morning I went to this little restaurant patio for breakfast. It overlooked the bay, and here I would write a few postcards and write in my holiday journal. I had not been so happy in a long time than just simply sitting here and enjoying my surroundings.