Ko Phi Phi, Thailand

Laura, Florian, and me. That is the new travel crew. We woke up and caught the ferry to Ko Phi Phi. We decided instead of getting a hostel we would instead get a little bungalow on the beach. For about $45 total we got a bungalow in ~resort~. We are now flashpackers not backpackers. It was a luxury. Our own bathroom! The first day Florian stayed behind and Laura and I went to the beach and basically just took naps. That night we walked around town, found a good place for dinner and made our plans for the next day. We ended up haggling a good price to rent our own ~private~ longtail boat and driver for half the day. I can't really remember how much we paid. I think it was 400baht a person which is ~$12. He would take us to all of the main sites and anywhere we wanted to go really.

We met our driver at 8am and set off into an unfortunately gloomy looking day. We started off by going to Maya Bay, which is the beach from the movie The Beach. It's the most famous beach in Thailand and is supposed to be beautiful. After an annoyingly expensive ($12) entrance fee, we arrived! The beach was beautiful. Really beautiful. But it may have been a bit overrated and the water on the sides (where the boats come in) was disgusting and filled with trash. Which is mainly why I am so bitter about the $12 entrance fee because that is supposedly going into "keeping the beach clean". Which is obviously BS.

ANYWAYS, after that we headed off to a spot where we were supposed to snorkel. The water was completely filled with floating garbage. It was equally disgusting and sad. We told the driver we rather not swim in trash and he took us to this beautiful, tiny, and completely secluded beach. We stayed there for awhile and soaked in the fact that we were the only people and that there was no trash.

From there we were taken to a cove(?), I'm not sure what you would call it. But it was beautiful. The water was the prettiest blue and there were cliffs surrounding us just about all the way around. We jumped out and swam around a bit. I got lots of cool pictures.

Our next (and also prematurely last) stop, was Monkey Beach. We were all really excited for Monkey Beach. It's a beach supposedly filled with monkeys. We got there and Laura and I each got some pictures a safe distance away from the monkeys. We all watched the monkeys as they ran around the beach and the ocean. Florian has been taking lots of video footage during this trip as he's going to make a video when he gets home. I saw him by the rocks, dangerously close to the monkeys....and you guessed it. He got bitten by a monkey. Laura and I thought it was kinda funny. He thought it was funny after we went to the hospital and he got a rabies shot. A bitter end to his last day in Thailand.That night we all went out to dinner again and mainly just took it easy. I also bought a new replacement to my GoPro lens! Overall, it was a pretty low key couple of days. But it was nice to relax with friends and have a private bungalow. Tomorrow Florian leaves early to catch a ferry to Phuket and a flight a few hours later to Bali to meet some friends. Laura and I are taking the later ferry to Phuket where we spend about a day or so before we catch an early flight to Cambodia!