: SOUTH JENNI

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.

Koh Lanta island was amazing. Definitely my favorite spot we went to in the islands. It's not touristy like all the other well known areas, but almost everyone still spoke English so it was very easy to get around. All the islands are incredibly gorgeous, but Koh Lanta was gorgeous and laid back so perfect for me.

We stayed at the best hostel - Lanta New Beach Bungalow. We stayed right on the beach for about $8 a night. The sun was starting to set when we arrived so we just played around and watched it. I promise that photo isn't edited one bit.

The view of our hostel in the daylight.

The first day we were there we rented scooters and rode around the island. They drive on the left here so that was a little scary to get used to but we all made it out alive. It was actually my favorite day of the trip in the islands. That's a gas station below. They basically have a sign with handwritten "gasoline" for 40 baht (a little over a dollar) and then glass bottles sitting out full of gas and you buy per bottle and they dump it in your bike.

I pretty much just took the lead because I felt pretty comfy with the craziness of the way they drive. It was the same as how they drive in China....except even a little safer. I saw a sign on the side of the road that said handmade jewelry so we decided to check it out. We just went down the road and it was the forest area with a couple houses and families hanging outside. We found the house that was selling jewelry and we stepped in to see a beautiful thai women with long dark hair and a foreigner sitting there with her. While we looked through her jewelry talked to the foreigner and found out more about her. Her name was Cookie...from Germany and she was just taking lessons that day from the lady on how to polish the stones for the jewelry. Her boyfriend was there too and his name was Klaus from Austria. They were just traveling around. It was the coolest moment to sit in this little hut and talk to them and the Thai women. Just one of those unexpected moments that only a traveler could understand.

We stopped for water at this little stand and this lady and her sweet daughter talked to us for a minute.

One of the best things about Thailand are the fresh fruit smoothies! There was quite a few Muslims living in Koh Lanta and they would do the prayers during the day over a loud speaker over the city. That was pretty cool to see.

We ate at a restaurant that turned out to be food from Myanmar they said. They weren't open yet but they hurried and opened for us and even had our food out within minutes. I ordered my meal first and it was on the table before the last person ordered. They also gave us free appetizers and fruit for after the meal. The dinner was so yummy! Super good and super spicy even though I ordered the least of the spicy levels. I'm a super wimp. On Maddie's plate she got these weird puffy chip things...not sure what they were. They did not taste good though! She put them to the side of her plate and the cook asked if she didn't like them. To not be rude she said, "Oh no they're good. I'll eat them later." And the woman goes, "Ok. I give you more. Why not?" And then she brings over a huge bowl of them for us to share. Awesome. And I can't stop saying how nice the Thai are. Seriously...the nicest.

That night rode our scooters to a nearby beach to watch the sunset again. After it set, we decided to go night swimming (and when I say night swimming I really mean skinny dipping). We stripped down and all ran in the water. About 30 seconds after we all got in Leslie suddenly shot straight out the water and started yelling and running back to the beach. I felt this sting on my leg kinda like a few bee stings and then Mallory started running to the beach too so I knew something was up. We threw on our clothes and ran to where there was a shop that had a light and looked at our skin. Leslie had big red bumps all over her torso and was itching and painful at the same time. As fast as we could (earlier that day Nicole had had a little scooter accident and hurt her ankle so she was limping through the sand to keep up with us) we got back to our scooters. We were going so fast trying to get Leslie help that I didn't even put my bra back on. I just hung it on the handle of my scooter so I was driving around with my bra just flying on the handle bar. We were a hot mess. We went to the nearest 7/11 hoping they could help us. We all ran inside and asked the clerks if they could speak English...but they couldn't. They probably thought we were crazy, American girls, soaking wet, and scanning the isles for...something. We didn't even know what we were looking for. A woman walked in about a minute after us and we asked if she spoke English. She did! Kind of. We did some charades trying to explain what happened, showing her Leslie's body and when she understood the look on her face was like "ooooooooooh no!" So that was a little terrifying. She said it was a jellyfish that stung her so she grabbed something from the medicine isle, opened it, and started rubbing it all over her body. It smelled like Vicks vapor rub or something like that. The jellyfish had wrapped all over her torso so the woman was like rubbing up her shirt, in her belly button...all over right in the middle of 7/11 in front of the cashier area. We were like half laughing, half scared to death. She told Leslie to go to bed and if it was bad tomorrow to go to the doctor. It worked! By the morning you could barely see any marks on her. #donttellcasey

Another restaurant we ate at was a little less on the clean side. We always walked by this stand this old man would wave at us to come in so one morning we decided to just go ahead and eat there.

So...this was him taking our order and then serving the food. I ordered french toast because that sounded like the safest bet. Luckily no one got sick.

The next day we did a trip where they take you to 4 islands for the day - for about $20. So glad we did that because it was awesome. Our boat driver was the radest. He didn't speak any English so we had no idea where they were taking us.

It was so fun though. They took us around to a couple cool islands and we snorkeled a little. Then on the third island they handed us all life jackets and took our snorkels away and told us to jump in and pointed towards the island. We were like uhhhhh say what? They didn't speak any English so we couldn't ask what we were doing and the water was dark and deep so we were a little uneasy. Trying to swim in a life jacket and ocean waves is not the easiest thing in the world but we made it. There was huge tour boats with ropes that led into a dark cave and just a line of asians holding onto the ropes chanting something. I can't even describe how crazy it was. All we knew was a tour group had put everyone in their tour on a rope that led into the cave and our tour guide just through us in the ocean to fend for ourselves. We jumped onto the chain of asians and swam our wave through the pitch black cave.

Eventually we could see a light at the end of the tunnel and it emerged out onto this secluded beach. SO AMAZING! We had no idea where we were going but it did not disappoint when we got there.