G'day Mates!: Paradise part 2

Wow, the suspense was killing you, Im sure. But dont you worry, Im back to fill you guys in on the rest of our trip-- or at least until I feel like I've written and posted enough for today (this is much more time consuming that I thought!!)

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, WERE HERE IN PHI PHI!

Beautiful right?? We havent even left the pier yet! We didnt know a lot about the island before we got there... Im sure the locals have more interesting things to do, such as, stare at their amazing backdrops of scenery rather than build a proper website with current information :) So we were amazed to see how compact and easy to get around this island was-- they dont even have cars there! Everyone bicycles around and if they have anything heavy to maneuver they use carts that they pull around. Someone from the hotel was at the pier to greet us, packed our luggage on one of the carts and told us he would meet us at the hotel with our things. Our hotel (Phi Phi Cabana Hotel) was only a 2 minute walk from the pier, so it was super easy to get around. The pier view was the front of our hotel. The whole village is on this skinny little isthmus (a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas usually with waterfronts on either side-- thanks wikipedia!!) You can see from the picture- pier on the left, beach on the right, and village in the middle! The first thing we did once we got there was change, taking extra long as we admired our view and went out into the village to get some lunch!!

Front of our hotel

village street

While we were out for lunch I spotted a lady carrying what I think she thought was her child but in reality it was a monkey dressed up in overalls and a Tshirt, they were picking out crabs together for dinner :) Strange! Already at this point in the trip I realized how much I LOVE thai food! It is soooo delicious and the food over there is so cheap that we just ordered waaaay too much food just to try out a bit of everything! We could literally get a whole meal with appetizer and two beers each for $18! It was great! After a very yummy lunch we went to the beach for awhile and decided to rent a kayak for a little bit to the other side of the beach, Sunset beach! There, Brian found a pretty good sized crab and somehow managed to pick it up! He was very proud of himself :) hehe As you can see from the picture- a big ole rain cloud was forming as we were enjoying ourselves out on this little secluded beach. Unfortunately, the only way back was the way we came- on the kayak. Less than halfway back to our hotel the rain started coming down hard!! It was crazy and I was freaking out! Brian kept assuring me that if I calmed down about it, it would be just like that scene from the Notebook (good effort, Brian) haha Once we got back we dried off and enjoyed the view from our balcony while waiting for the rain to stop. That didn't take too long- so we got to enjoy a lovely evening at the village with lots of food and drinks!!! While on the beach earlier we made plans to head to Maya Bay in the morning on one of those cool looking long tail boats! Maya Bay is a very popular place to go because that is where they filmed the movie The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio. (hmm I wonder if I was sitting in the exact same spot on the beach as LEo??! THAT would be cool!) After dinner, we called it a night.....

Beautiful view from the hotel :)

Mmmmmm PAD THAI!

GOOD MORNING PARADISE! We were so excited to head out on the 3rd morning for our boat excursion. We left around 730 or 8 in the morning (the time change had us feeling more like it was 1030 or 11) plus the guy who was taking us out on the boat said mornings are best, because the places we were headed are less crowded from people taking day tours. First of all, I loved being in this cool old looking Thai style boat. Brian said they just rigged up an old car motor to these boats haha but regardless it looks so neat and almost iconic for the area! Also, it is so amazing because the water is soooo flat, no waves at all- Ive never seen anything like it! (I guess that's also why we were able to kayak!) Some areas the water is dark blue, some areas is completely clear like pool water, and some areas it is bright turquoise!! Here are some pics of the route to Maya Bay.............

on our way, looking back at our hotel

brian checking it out

so hard to pick just a few pictures when they were all so spectacular!!

Almost there!!!

Brian enjoying the boat ride!!

Just pulled in. Thanks for driving, Adam :)

We took so many more pictures but I had to narrow them down.... So we pulled up to Maya Bay and it was absolutely beautiful!! There was really not too many people there, which surprised me! I would have thought such an amazing place would be packed all day! And maybe it gets like that later in the day but for the time we were there we had lots of the beach to ourselves!

view of the beach we swam out to

Soooooo amazing! After hanging out on the beach for awhile we decided to pack up and have our sweet boat driver take us to the next location to do a bit of snorkeling!! It was beautiful and we had such a good time. We snorkeled to this little beach then when we came back Adam, our boat captain, had some bread to feed the fishys! Brian decided to feed them while he was still in the water so he was swarmed with tropical yellow and black fish! It was so cool.... I tried from the boat and the moment I got the slice close to the water they were hopping out to get it- I freaked and dropped the whole thing in... oh well :)

Next up was Phi Ley bay which was on the other side of this island. (there are actually 2 islands that make up the Phi Phi islands but only one of them is inhabited. The one we were touring around this day was not! By this time in the day we started to notice that there were many other bigger boats coming around. We were feeling pretty lucky because most of those boat have about 100 other people on it and have strict times when they need to come in and head to the next place. Phi Ley bay is another beautiful area with crystal clear water where we just hopped out (it was very shallow in some areas) and Brian did a bit more snorkeling while I lounged in the boat!

Then we checked out Viking Cave-- I really am still not sure what this is or what they are up to in there... (but thank god for wikipedia-- There they have a thriving bird's nest soup industry, hmmm still not sure what that means, more please wiki: apparently this certain kind of cave bird produces a saliva nest (ew) and is a delicacy and one of the most expensive animal products consumed by humans) STRANGE.

Our last stop was Monkey beach! After our trip in August to Singapore I was pretty excited about seeing more monkeys! We werent really sure if there were actually going to be monkeys there-- we never even saw any at or near the village (you would think the little scavengers would go over there considering it was on the same island as all the people!) Sure enough, there were tons of monkeys!! A whole family of them! My favorite was a sweet little fam with a tiny monkey baby who was still breast feeding his mommy and the daddy was right there the whole time, even started combing through the mommys hair (for fleas or something but it was still sweet) Brian got a bit up close with one of them :)

Two monkeys on the beach :)

This little guy wanted the shirt of Brians back!

After all the adventure for the day we decided it was time to head back, get some lunch and hang by the beach! It rained for all of 30 minutes this day, as well. Apparently this is necessary for a tropical location to stay beautiful and green! Then we watched the sun set while drinking a few beers :)

We then got ready for another delicious Thai seafood dinner! It was a really nice outdoor restaurant (minus the millions of stray cats wandering around-- but I guess thats normal around there because they are everywhere!!) We then walked down the beach where there was tons of beach party action going on! There were light shows and tiki torches and we couldnt resist stopping for a drink! We stopped at one bar which was about to start a fire hula hooping show (or something like that!!) when I spotted some guy holding a monkey-- sorta like the lady who was cradling one earlier.... next thing I know the Thai owner of the pet monkey took him off that other guy and onto me!!! The monkey wrapped his super long arms around my neck and his super long legs around my waist and nuzzled his little monkey face into my chest! He was soo cute. The owner told me he liked to be cuddled-- although he wouldnt let us take any picture :( Guess I'll have to store that one in the old memory bank. Later after I gave him back, as I was walking by the monkey reached out to me again for me to hold him -- I think he liked me :)