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Landed on koh phi phi after a lovely sunny 2 hour ferry ride from Krabi. My first impression was a good one. You walk off the pier onto a busy main street full of little stalls and shops. There are no cars on phi phi which makes wandering around feel a lot safer (although you still have the bloody mopeds). That impression quickly changed however when reached the dump that was my bungalow. It was a run down bunch of wooden huts with no area for gathering and as it turns out, no breakfast (despite it saying on the website and me paying a small fortune for it). As you walk up the massive hill to the place which was surrounded by a dump and a building site which stank to high heaven. My bungalow was a hot dark room with a dingy shower and toilet. I felt unclean just standing in it. The worst thing was that there was no gathering area which meant I was there by myself unable to meet people. In the end I went to dinner by myself, the first time since I've been in this country, and had a few drinks in the irish bar where I got talking to some sleazy men so I quickly made an exit.
Phi phi itself is just s giant tourist festival - basically an Ibiza out of Europe. I'm sure the islands around them are beautiful and calm but the main town itself is too busy and dirty.
Day 2 in phi phi after a sleepless night resulted in me getting up late to met one of the English girls off the ferry from Krabi. She hadn't booked a place and had to find a place for 3 of them which turned out to be a complete nightmare. Eventually she went to the (much nicer) resort right next to mine which meant I could use their pool. Woo! However, during our hike around every hostel in the island I got bitten. A lot. And I'm not talking about little mozzy bites that last a day and itch occasionally. I'm talking about huge red swollen boil-like lumps that itch so much that it painful and makes you feel sick. I tried everything from the strongest antihistamines to steroid cream but nothing stopped the pain. That evening I went home early as I was feeling run-down and low due to the bites. Another sleepless night.
Day 3 in phi phi and we decided to go on a long boat trip around Maya bay, place where the film 'the beach' was filmed with leonardo dicaprio. We went around monkey island then, went snorkelling around a beautiful bay before going on the beach itself where it had the softest sand I had ever been on. It was totally overpacked to two of the girls got bitten by ants but I was nice to chill out for an hour. We watched the sun go down on the way back to phi phi town and had an early dinner. The sea water had worked marvels on my bites and we were all shattered so we called it a night straight after dinner. By 9 i was curled up in my shack on my lumpy mattress with a good book and a bag of malteasers. Rock and roll.
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