The 3rd island we went to on vacation was Koh Phi Phi. This island was incredibly beautiful, but more of a party island. We got a place to stay right on the beach which sounded dreamy but was actually the worst. Our bedroom was right next to a nightly party with techno music making the walls shake and fire dancers every night. So.....I would not recommend staying at Stones Bar Hostel unless you're going to be up all night. The view was beautiful though.
We took a tour to get to see some areas around the island. The engines on the boats are huge and exposed and reminded me of something you'd see in an old war movie, but there they were just getting us around the islands.
First we were going to monkey beach where there's a little strip of beach and monkeys run around all over. The tide was up so we missed that stop. We headed to Maya Beach which is a pretty famous place because the movie The Beach was filmed there, so lots of tourists but it was still worth going anyways because it's so stunning.
This little hole in the rock below has people actually living inside it. I can't remember, but I think they said about 15 people. They make their money from growing marijuana and also from selling a birds nest (I can't remember which type of bird) to the Chinese which they use in Viagra. And apparently it's really good money so they protect the little cove with machine guns. It's crazy this little money making cove is right next to one of the most traveled islands in Thailand. They used to allow tourists to walk through but they started littering so the group of people in there don't allow it anymore. We could only drive by in the boat but you could see big marijuana plants as we drove by.
We stopped and jumped out and swam at Maya Bay. It was this huge cove surrounded by the rocks and just blue green water. The water is like bath water, so warm.
Then we rode over the Maya Beach to spend a little bit of time which is just on the other sides of the rocks. It's another cove that's 75% surround by rocks, but this one has a beautiful beach you can relax on.
The trees had the craziest roots. All of them were so unique so I had to snap a couple pictures.
The sun was starting to go down just before we left. So beautiful. Our next stop was to go cliff jumping. Okay so if you know me you know jumping off of high things isn't so much my favorite thing to do. Even standing on high things makes me kinda angry. But I really wanted to do it because I wanted to show Jordan and Chelsey that I'm not a wimp every single time.
So we get to the cliff and then I realized I had to climb up it. That was already making me so nervous. But I climbed to the top...I did. They had given us these shoes because the cliff was completely made of razor sharp rocks and yeah my shoes were too big and fell off. So, I was completely cut up and bleeding all over my feet. When you walk up to the edge all you see is the huge ocean and then you look down and wow....it looks a lot farther up than you think. Everyone was jumping from about 50 feet and I looked over the edge and immediately said, "nope, nope, nope nope" and just walked away. Who cares what Jordan and Chelsey think. I'm jumping from the lowest spot I can. So I crawled down to the lower spot and even jumping from there I was shaking so bad I thought I was going to just fall off the edge. But I HAD to jump. So I forced myself. And I screamed like a little girl for 2 seconds until I hit the water. But afterwards our tour guide told us that she hasn't even jumped from higher than where I did so......I made the right choice right.
After the sun went down we also jumped in the water where you can see phytoplankton. It's pretty cool...you just swim around and create movement in the water and these glow in the dark organisms show up in the water. Like magic.
We also did a little hike up to the Phi Phi viewpoint. You can see the whole island is this strip of land of shops and hotels and then the beautiful rocks surround it.
When the tsunami hit 11 years ago this island was one that got hit hard. They showed a photo of the destruction afterwards and the entire strip was washed out. That must have been pretty horrifying for those who were up near the viewpoint to see what was happening below when the wave came through.
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