Playtime on Phi Phi

Today has been so awesome! We got up early-ish and went down to the pier to meet 4 other girls, 2 of which we had shared a room with in Phuket,  and two of their friends. We had between the 6 of us hired a long tail boat to take us round the sights of Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh.

Our first stop, around 8:45   was at Maya Bay, the setting for the 1999 film 'The Beach'. It was absolutely stunning. The sea was turquoise green/blue and it was surrounded by rocky mounts, with a covering of trees.  We spent an hour here swimming and floating about in the sea, but I could have stayed all day. We went here first and early to avoid the crowds. When we left it had started filling up and there was so many people. 

After an hour we moved onto Loh Samah bay for some snorkeling.  The water was really clear and the fish were everywhere. They were mainly small-ish yellow and black striped ones but we saw the odd larger rainbowy/bluey one. The fish came so close to us they were probably within touching distance.

After this we went to Pileh lagoon for a short stop. This was again another beautiful place. We took it in turns jumping off the front of the boat into the water before heading off to Shark Point.

Shark Point is, as the name suggests, a good place to snorkel and see sharks. Not the dangerous attacking kind,  but docile black tipped sharks. Before we got in the boat driver told us 'sometimes you see loads and sometimes there's only a few'. Luck was not with us. I saw very very brief from a distance one swimming off but that was it, which was a shame.

Around 12:30 we arrived at what the driver told us was Monkey Beach, only it wasn't a beach, it was a cliff face with monkeys on it. We hopped out the boat into the water to get a closer look and managed to find some peanuts that other people or the monkeys had dropped so we were able to fed them. They were really cute, and compared to the next place we went, very calm and tame.

We pulled up at actual Monkey Beach round the corner after asking the driver if we could instead of mooring in the middle of the sea for more snorkeling. These monkeys were a lot more aggressive. They were walking along the beach,  and at some points swimming around. Ingot off the boat with a stack of pringles in my hand to feed to the monkeys. I was immediately approached by a large monkey so I retrieved a pringle from the stack and attempted to hide the other out of sight behind my back. The monkey was not fooled and started climbing up my leg. I panicked a bit and gave him the whole stack and he jumped off and ran away. I was basically mugged by a monkey.

Thankfully we had some pineapple on the boat. We fed the monkeys and managed to get them to climb up on us (without panicking) which was pretty cool! Lauren was hiding food in her bikini top to stop them stealing it all in one go but one money figured it out and climbed up her to help themselves which was funny.

After this we headed back to the pier for 2 as we has only hired the boat for 6 hours. We hadn't made it to all the places we had wanted to go but we had had an amazing day. As we got off the boat Lauren stood on something sharp and got a little cut on her foot. I asked her if she was alright and then promptly stood on the exact same sharp thing, also getting a small cut. It couldn't take the shine off the awesome trip though. We said goodbye to the other girls, headed back to the hostel, showered and collapsed on the bed.

Around 6pm we decided to make a move and started getting ready to go out for dinner. We went to a restaurant not far from the hostel where I had fried rice and Lauren had carbonara.  My food came out so fast it was unreal. After dinner we got freshly made ice cream, made in front of us. It was pretty cool. Then we headed to a beach bar to watch a fire show (men swinging around poles that were on fire) and have a drink. We headed back to the acommodation around half ten, absolutely knackered.