Koh Phi Phi

Koh Phi Phi is a small island just South of the mainland and just East of Phuket. Most of it's international fame is due to the gigantic tsunami that swept through and devastated the whole island in December 2004. However, today you can barely see any evidence of this horrible incident, except that many of the shops and restaurants had pictures up of their buildings mostly underwater, or a sign thanking those who funded their rebuilding. In fact, many people I talked to that lived there before the tsunami hit said the island has been greatly improved after the rebuilding effort.

Anyway, enough history. Dalin and I left Phuket on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 and headed to Koh Phi Phi. We straightaway met two very cool people that became friends that we hung out with while we were there. First there was Aya, a great girl from Israel traveling solo and full of stories as she had just come to Thailand from China. Next there was Mikey, a guy from Denmark that was really polite and just plain pleasant. When we landed we immediately struck out in search for Mosquito Dive Shop because there was a guy I had contacted through Couchsurfing named Daniel. He gave us a map of the island and showed us the best places to stay, eat, hangout, etc. All of his advice ended up being spot on, and apart from that he was the really cheerful relaxed sort.

Dalin, Aya, Mikey and I found a place to stay and then headed off to explore the island. Most of the island is limestone cliffs jutting straight up out of the ocean and covered in jungle. It's incredibly breathtaking and beautiful to see from the ocean, but it did make most of the island's inhabitable area clustered in between two long beaches on opposite sides of the island, about 5 minutes walk from one another. One of the nicest things about everything being so small and crowded is that there were no motorized vehicles on the entire island. There was not a single scooter, taxi, truck or anything else. Everyone either rode bikes or walked and all the big things were moved around the island in big wheelbarrow type carts. This did give everything a fairly crowded feel, but never too bad or unbearable.

The place that was the most fun to hang out was by far The Reggae Bar. The only reason this place was any fun was because there was a full sized, raised boxing ring right in the middle. To make it better, you could volunteer to fight your friend, and then you both got a free bucket! Now I loved sparring back in my martial arts class, and was stoked at the possibility of being able to do it here. Honestly, the bucket was just an added perk. So after a few drinks I convinced Dalin to get up there and fight me. Well, actually I'd heard about this place long before we ever got on the island and so we'd decided a while ago that we would fight if we got there. We were quickly fitted up with some super-stylin' shorts, I was in the blue corner with the blue gear, then got in the ring where we had shin pads, and very padded gloves and a helmet... but no cup. I was a bit worried about this, because I know that no friend would kick another friend in the crotch, but even during a friendly fight when people get hit in the head a few times and then get frustrated, accidents can happen. Now because Dalin had never been in even a mock fight before, other then playing Capoiera, I asked how hard we were going to hit, and he said very little. So, at the beginning of the fight I was trying to stick with mild but firm contact, but halfway through the first round I caught a pretty powerful hook to the head that made me stumble, and I remember thinking "Oh! Its on now!" I then notched up the speed and took the power to more like 2/3 full. Dalin later told me that survival instincts were kicking in and he was just trying to hit me as much as possible as hard as he could. Three full exhausting rounds later we were done. I ended up being the winner, and if I'm going to be honest (but hopefully not sound cocky) I was definitely in control and getting many more hits in. However, I also got nailed many times as well. Dalin and I were still friends and neither of us were hurt worse then a slight black eye that Dalin received.

Aya also showed some interest in fighting, and we just happened to meet some more Couchsurfers that were there at the bar with Daniel, so after chatting for a bit, Aya decided that she and a Colombian girl that was one of the Couchsurfers would fight. Aya got pretty worked over by the Colombian girl (I've forgotten her name, but "The Colombian" sounds much more menacing anyway), but in the end it was a great friendly fight, Many others in the bar got up to fight, and occasionally some local trained Muay Thai fighters would get up and have a match. These fights were actually staged, and were full of flashy flying knees, amazing take downs, and dramatic comebacks. One guy even got "knocked" through the ropes, out of the ring, and onto a table full of startled tourists. Even though they were staged, these fights were funner then hell to watch and I always enjoyed them.

There is one more story of that first night that needs to be told, and that is the story of Hannah, a crazy bitch we ran into. After drinking the "fruits" of our labor, we all scurried off and danced on one of the beaches to loud techno music for a while, Dalin went off to bed and Aya, Mikey and I wandered down the beach in search of... well, nothing in particular really, but we were going to find it anyway. We saw a few fire-dancers performing on the beach at a chill bar, so we went to watch them. Enter Hannah. This chick was creepy skinny, covered in tattoos and some odd choices for piercings. She told us right off that her boyfriend was one of the local guys dancing with fire and told us she felt kinda guilty because he was only 19 (even though we all said he looked 14) and she was 22. Then she told us this again and again and again for about the next 20 minutes as we tried to have conversation between ourselves as well as her. Eventually she started trying to pressure us into getting some shots that none of us wanted, and started going on and on about how her uncle owned the bar and he'd be mad at her if we didn't get anything. Eventually, trying to nicely get rid of her I said something along the lines that we might get some in a bit, and before we knew it she had a bunch of shots brought over to us. We tried to explain that we didn't want them so after the bar guy took them back Hannah started to freak out, mostly at Mikey. She said that her uncle was going to hit her and that she was going to call her Thai friends and they were going kick Mikey's ass and throw him off the island. I was trying to calm this bitch down and defuse the situation when she started to attack (as in full on punching) Mikey. Mikey tried as well to calm her down by apologizing and trying to deflect her flailing arms. Not that I'm trying to sound bad ass or anything, but its a good thing she didn't go after me, because if a girl is going to attack me and fight me like man I would've hit her like a man to get her to stop, or at the very least shove her down hard enough that she'd stop, especially after how annoying and rude she'd been. Anyway, after she finally stopped, she went into crying mode and started apologizing for hitting him, Mikey got everyone an unwanted shot and then, since the mood had been killed, shot, burned, then shot again just to make sure it was dead, Aya and I headed back to the hostel and Mikey stuck around with Crazy Bitch because she wasn't quite done crying and carrying on.

The post script on this adventure is after talking to Hannah for another hour or so, Mikey said she had confessed to being dumped by her boyfriend that day, and this other guy that she was saying was her boyfriend wasn't even 19 (well duh, we knew that). The next day Mikey ran into her outside of where she worked (she didn't even work at the place we met her), and she didn't even remember him, and seemed very unconcerned that she'd punched him in the face just the night before. Apparently Crazy Hanna is a bit of a legend. A week later in Malaysia I met a girl from Canada who knew Hanna because they had met at the full moon party and then again on Koh Phi Phi. She had a similar opinion of her.

The next day was a lazy beach day, and I met a really fun local guy named Johnny (I think), who was just goofy and fun to hang out with. He taught me some Poi (the fire dancing thing with balls of fire on chains), and I taught him what I knew with Dalin's devil sticks. We also just chatted for a while, he showed me some of his kung fu, I showed him some of my Shaolin martial arts. Eventually he told me to come watch him at that night's fire show and if I came just before the show I could dance with him using Poi. That night we did return and he made good on his promise, and again I didn't set myself on fire, so it was another mild success. Later that night the group of us returned to The Reggae Bar so I could make good on my promise and fight Mikey. I'll admit to being pretty nervous about fighting him as I always do when I spar someone I've never seen fight, just because I how no clue how they fight and how good they are. Also Mikey is more built then I am (which isn't saying too much to be honest). We had a great, fairly even and lively fight but in the end I prevailed yet again (I was in the blue gear again).

On a different island, very near Koh Phi Phi is Maya Beach, which is the beach that was used in "The Beach". This island was part of a national marine park which meant camping was allowed, so Dalin and I thought that is would be fun. There was a tour that would take you out there to camp but was also a crazy expensive price, so we instead decided to take a half day boat tour that ended at Maya Beach for 1/3 the price, then just get left there. That meant we meaning we could go to Monkey beach and see "wild" monkeys that were so tame that they would jump up on you and seemed to enjoy chasing the nervous screaming girls. However these things could be mean if you push them. One guy jumped off the boat and started to tease and roughhouse with one and another quickly jumped on this guys back and bit his ear. Maybe the monkey was just jealous because he wasn't getting any attention. Either that or the tourist was messing with the monkey's woman. We also did two snorkeling stops which proved to be amazing. I saw more variety snorkeling here then I did scuba diving on Koh Tao. The highlights were loads of puffer fish, a black and white banded sea snake, a moray eel on the hunt eating clams and small fish. There were also huge, meter long yellow fish with super long noses, but I've forgotten what they are called. We also boated through an absolutely stunning canyon that had sheer, jungle covered cliffs towering over you on both sides that rose straight out of the gorgeous turquoise ocean.

When we finally got to Maya beach we spoke with a park ranger who told us we couldn't camp there unless we were part of the tour and tried to get us to pay them the crazy price of the tour. Dalin found a few more park rangers and after talking to them for a bit he got a very iffy OK (they couldn't speak English all that well), so we figured we'd go for it, and we'd just have to be sneaky about it. We hung around until it began to get a little dark, then went inside of a little cave like area and set up the tent. This worked super well until the tide came in. We figured the tide would get that high, but it took it hours to do so and by that time we had complete cover of darkness to move our tent behind some shacks and trees. All went well, we were able to sleep with just the noise of the beach in the background, and in the morning there were only a few other people there with the official camping tour. The bad part is that the park rangers recognized us in the morning and again tried to get us to pay the crazy tour price, but because we weren't going to (we didn't even have that much on us), we finally settled on the park entry fee for both days. We then had the beach to ourselves except for a few other "tour" campers and the pesky park rangers. It stayed that way for hours, but eventually... just like in "The Field of Dreams", people did come. From there is was just a matter of finding a long tail boat guy that was on his way back to the main island.

We ended up leaving the island the next day because we'd run out of our 30 days on our Visa and needed to leave Thailand, so we decided to head South to Malaysia.