Snorking fun

So we went for a hike up to the view point on Koh Pi Pi the other day, which was BEAUTIFUL. It's a really amazing island, even if it's over developed for our tastes. While we were up there, we ran into a couple of french canadian gals who were staying down on To Koh beach in a sweet little bungalow so we hiked down to that side of the island to check it out. Perfect! There were only 18 bungalows, a restaurant, and a bar that was more like this Kansas city/Huntington beach dude's private house party than an actual bar. He opens when people show up and closes when the last person leaves - apparently sometimes at 6 am. So for the next night (we'd already paid for a second night in town) we reserved a 500 baht ($12) bungalow that opens out onto the beach and moved over there the next morning. The access is either by an hour hike over the "mountain" or by longtail boat taxi. The boats in town generally won't take people there because the super cool family who runs the place won't pay the commissions, which is part of why we didn't hear about it before when everyone told us the entire island was booked up or super expensive. The boat ride is quite a trip, too. These are just little wooden boats, maybe 20 feet long at the most, and it was super windy since a storm was blowing through. We and all of our belongings got pretty soaked, but it was fun. The boat captains are pros at this thing, and laughed their asses off at us the entire way.

We also took a sunset snorkelling (snorking in Thai ;) cruise over to Koh Pi Pi Leh which is the relatively uninhabited second island of Pi Pi. There are some native folk who live in the caves and collect swallows nests to sell for birdsnest soup, but it's otherwise a national park. It's beautiful! I didn't snorkel much because the water was too choppy, but I did see some of the most amazing tropical fish - huge pink and turqouis things dozens of others. This is paradise for all your diving types. We moved over into Maya Bay, but only for a short bit, so I didn't snorkel much more. Darren decided to swim out to the boat, so he got to see a lot more and fell in love with the whole thing. It's too bad that we didn't get to do more, but the sun was setting. We'll definitely be back here someday, though - it's so beautiful.

We're catching a flight back to bangkok tonight, then on to Chang Mai in the morning. I think we're going to try to bus straight from there to a little town called Pai, and use that as our base to hike or cycle around some of the hilltribe villages. You can pay guides to take you trekking, but everyone does there - therefore I don't want to do that :) So we're going to try to find some of those places that don't get busloads of foreigners.