Day 46 - Swimming With The Fishes

Matt was feeling well enough this morning luckily to come out for a trip on Mr Chet's longtail boat which would take us around the nearby island of Koh Phi Phi Ley. He tried to time it so it wouldn't be at peak busy-ness at the various bays and lagoons (it is always a level of busy as pretty much everyone who visits Koh Phi Phi Don where we're staying will go there) There was 7 of us in the group, plus Mr Chet, his brother and a driver. We started by going to a little lagoon. One of Mr Chet's USPs is that he takes loads of pictures of the scenery and of you to upload on to Facebook and as he's done this tour hundreds of times he knows the best pictures to take so there was a lot of posing in front of various rocks etc. Post-lagoon we went to Maya Bay where the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach was filmed. Even when we were there at about 9am it was very busy. It is a beautiful beach, the sand is like flour and the water is so blue, but you couldn't spend a relaxing day here simply due to the volume of boats going in and out with more people.

After Maya Bay we went to our first snorkelling spot. As discussed in a previous blog post I'm not fantastic in open water. I also struggle with having something like a snorkel mouthpiece in my mouth cause it makes me panic and gag (I was once sick on a dentist who was takin dental impressions) so I was very anxious about the snorkelling to the point I wasn't sure I'd be able to get in but Mr Chet was very patient with me and helped to calm me (and another person who was afraid) down. He suggested I go in without the mouthpiece first and just focus on being in the water and holding my breath if I wanted to look down. It really helped and as I'd missed the first appearance Mr Chet's brother took my hand and swam me to find a turtle. He swam to the bottom and nudged it for me which was very kind (less kind for the turtle I suppose). It was amazing!

We went back to the first lagoon for more snorkelling. Mr C was confident that as it was much shallower and calmer I'd be able to relax more and use the snorkel mouth piece - he was determined I should start using it so I could 'Find Nemo' later on. I found the technique of pretending to be Darth Vader and channeling his breathing really worked for me. We saw so many beautiful and colourful fish plus a baby shark! Apparently baby sharks are not dangerous but surely there's a transition between them being harmless babies and harmful adults and I'm not sure how you identify that point... I was loving snorkelling by now and didn't want to get out but get out we did for some time drying off on the beach and eating lunch. Mr Chet's brother (we never learnt his name, I guess he was also Mr Chet but he could have been a brother in law) found a dead crab and brought it over to us looking just as excited as when he gave us our pineapple i.e. thrilled.

Next stop was trying to find Nemo. It was back in the more open sea so that freaked me out a bit but it was actually much easier to deal with the waves when your head was in the water. I didn't attempt to dive below the surface but Matt did a few times which meant we got some great videos and pictures. It's so weird to realise how close to fish you are all the time when you're in the water, a bit creepy really. We did find Nemo after MC's B went poking around at the bottom again. I've got the snorkelling bug now, but not sure I'll ever making diving.

Once we were out and wrapped in in towels to try and avoid the heat we went briefly to Monkey Beach. As the name suggests it's a beach with monkeys on it. Mr Chet was very very clear with us not to go too close to the monkeys, not to feed them and not to tease them as they can get angry very quickly and bite you. Of course there were big groups of idiots doing all of those things plus picking them up like cats. Is it wrong we really wanted someone to get bitten?

All that was done by 1.30 and we grabbed a quick lunch. Unfortunately Matt started to feel a bit worse again. We stayed in for a couple of hours and then ventured up to the Phi Phi viewpoint at his insistence. I don't think I've ever sweated so much and this was at 5pm. By the end I could wring out all my clothes and hair, it was gross. You start off with about 300 steps then get to View Point 1, not a bad view but you could go higher. To get to VP2 you go up a big steep slope which was horrific. Luckily there was a drink stand there but unluckily it was also very crowded for sunset. Luckily I had heard that VP3 has an apparently slightly lesser view but is quieter so we headed up an uneven and steep dirt track to get there. (And even more luckily there was a geocache which of course had nothing to do with my decision to go up there). In fact the view was amazing, it was very quiet and we timed it just perfectly to enjoy a fresh coconut as the sun set.

Sadly that's where our, well Matt's, luck ended. We managed to make it down but since then he's not been well at all. The worst he's been. I slipped out for a late dinner but Matt had to stay in bed. Poor him.Read more