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The rendezvous with the boys at Phuket went smoothly and we were able to head straight off to a hotel to dump our bags and catch up. It was good to finally meet up with them after a lot of persuading (Mr Bowen!). The hotel was cheap and cheerful and I'm pretty sure it was a block of flats, but it did the job, and we went off to get some beers so I could bore them with my stories of my travels so far!!
As there didn't seem to be much going on in Phuket and I'd heard from people I'd met along the way that Ko Phi Phi was far better, we decided to take the early ferry the next morning there. The views on the way into and out of Phi Phi are amazing, and the island was pretty nice and lively around where we stayed, although as it was heavily hit by the Tsunami, there's a lot of redevelopment and building work going on. Not so good when you want to sleep in!
You can't go to Phi Phi and not take a trip to Maya Beach (where The Beach was filmed) on Ko Phi Phi Lay (the smaller of the two islands, which is a National Park). We decided to go on a snorkeling trip which would take us there as well as around the island we were staying on. The sea got pretty rough that day and I have never been so scared on a boat, but it made it all the more fun! Getting to Maya Beach was pretty life threatening too, we had to swim to a tiny cave and climb through. The cave was getting hit by pretty violent waves and as there was only a small rope to hold onto, people were getting thrown into the rocks and I managed to lose my flip flops - onto my 3rd pair of the trip now! I think Pete was pretty scared and rightly so, we had to come back out the way we went in, swimming against the waves! We survived virtually unscathed thankfully and managed to visit most of the other places on the trip including Monkey Bay where I managed to overcome my fear of catching rabies and we fed the monkeys Pringles and Ritz biscuits! While we were in the rough sea, our boat broke down (I say boat, but it was more a few bits of wood thrown together with a car engine on the back), and the driver spent the next 30 mins in his underpants fixing it - not a pleasant sight!
We intended to go out quite a bit and enjoy the nightlife, but as we were all ill at various different points, it never materialized! All of us experienced some kind of sickness bug, which was good timing! We did the best we could and went to a few bars, one of which had had a Thai Boxing ring which anyone could use and if you balls, take on a Thai guy...think I'll pass on that!! Dave and I did agree to fight there and on the night we were going to, there were two Brits fighting and one guy's shoulder dislocated with the first punch and we then watched 9 Thai blokes, trying with no success, to put it back in place! Thai Boxing was then abandoned for the night and "Weak Shoulders Dave Bowen" backed out of our big fight - which I believe technically makes me the winner!
We managed to get a good amount of laying on the beach and playing frisbee in and found some amazing BBQ fish at a restaurant. On our last night we had a blow out and moved to a nice hotel (the boys bullied me to stretch my budget) which had a mini bar, TV, DVD player and massive beds. It was definitely worth it though and we were able to watch some poor quality DVDs we bought from the street sellers!
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