Lounging Around Phi Phi Island

The second half of our day in Hong Kong was spent flying to Phuket (pronounced Poo-Ket), Thailand. We took a very interesting 30-minute cab ride (you had to be there) to Phuket Town, where, due to a flight delay in Bangkok, we arrived at our hotel at 10:30p. We stepped out of the hotel to explore and found ourselves across the street from a nice salon. And we immediately proceeded to get massages and facials well into the early morning of the next day. When in Rome :)

We woke up Wednesday morning and headed to the ferry, which we took across the bay to the Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) Islands. (Thailand really has a knack for picking geographic names that are awkward in English). Don't worry, none of the above vessels were our ferry.

 Nets dangling to dry outside of a fishing boat

 

Excited for our first day in Thailand!

 
 

As we got closer to Phi Phi Island, I took a picture of this free-standing rock. 

Had no idea this would later be my dive site!

 Arriving at Ko Phi Phi Don pier

  First stop - lunch! Our first Thai food meal - yummm!! The restaurant we ate at was owned by a guy who was trapped under a fallen building after the 2004 tsunami. He named his restaurant "Thank You" because he was so grateful to be alive. The food was fantastic.

 After lunch and shopping, we checked into our cute casita by the beach 

and headed to, well, the beach of course. 

Long boats at low tide. Not going anywhere for a while?

"Hey Jen - maybe we should get our nails done after we lay out..."

Rough day...

Waiting for dark with Peter, my Thai/Dutch dive guide

After the beach, I took the plunge and signed up for a night dive. There were dive shops everywhere and even though we planned a morning snorkeling trip with the sharks, I thought I couldn't pass up the chance to dive in one of Thailand's best dive spots, even if Thailand itself is not 100% known for its diving. More on that to come (it gets its own feature post!). But right before the dive, I got a mani/pedi. This turned out to be a terrible idea both because the lighting was awful so I made a horrific color choice (Christmas green instead of teal... yikes), and also because the fins totally ruined the polish. Luckily pedicures only cost about $5 here, so no biggie :)

While I was night diving, Jen had an adventure of her own... tattoo!! 

(it's an elephant). This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip... 

so much going on here!

After the dive we grabbed some fantastic seafood at a restaurant where they display the raw fish, prawns, squid, etc., on a table out front and you choose the exact fish they will fillet and throw on the grill. Too bad neither of us had our cameras! Luckily we got pictures of another type of fish...

After dinner, we went to see the doctor. The Feesh Doctor! Have you heard of that spa treatment where the little fish come over and nibble all the dead skin off of your feet? Well it's everywhere in Thailand and again, only $5, so after much wincing and anguish on my part, I agreed to join Jen and give it a try. This is perhaps one of the strangest things I have ever done. Ever. If there is a ticklish scale like there is a spicy scale at Thai restaurants from 1 to 10, the fish micromassage (nibble) is about a 10 on the tickle scale. Hot chilies!

 I can hardly keep my feet down it tickles so much...

"We want to eat your feet!" ~Sign out front

I will say, my feet felt super smooth after 15 minutes. 

The whole thing still seems so gross though! Ick!

Such a fun day! (Yes, we did all of that in one day). Which is why we were only slightly disappointed when a huge thunderstorm rolled in that night and canceled our 6a.m. snorkel with the sharks trip. Instead, we actually got some sleep for the first time since we left Guam Monday afternoon (it was now Thursday). The weather still wasn't great so we did some final island shopping, read and talked at a cafe by the water, and ate one last good meal (not gonna lie... pizza... which was amazing) before leading up on the ferry again. 

Back in Phuket, we took a tuk tuk (say that 3x fast) to a nearby shopping mall (since we clearly had not shopped enough) for Zara trip #2 (new country!) and another good night sleep before heading out the next morning.

All throughout our trip, it was so strange how time was passing. The days were flying by and yet, we couldn't believe how long each day seemed because we did so much stuff. We kept finding ourselves saying things like, "Hey Jen, remember when we were in Hong Kong... yesterday?" and it was just so unbelievable that just 24 hours before we were in pseudo China and now we were on an island in Thailand laying on the beach. Crazy what you can do in a day!

Zara in Thailand :)

One last observation about Phi Phi Island is that I am pretty sure Jen and I were some of the only Americans on the island... if there were any others, we never ran into a single one. Most of the visitors were from Japan, Europe, Australia or New Zealand. Even despite the sea of white people, I was so floored by the diversity. We met one guy from Indonesia who grew up in Australia but now lived in Singapore. And it seemed like the more people we talked to, the more of those kinds of stories we heard. My dive instructor, Peter, was Dutch/Thai, grew up in Thailand, did his first year of Uni in Denmark but is doing his next year in New Zealand. My experience growing up in Florida and Texas but moving to California sounds pretty boring in comparison. Grateful for the opportunity to see these new places now, especially Thailand which seems to be a crossroads for the world. It and New Zealand are tied for number of world travelers I've met who have named one of these beautiful places their favorite country in the world. Great food, inexpensive everything, nice people, beautiful scenery, complete freedom to do whatever you want. Yeah, I can totally see why.