Beautiful, messy and loud

I have never been to the southern coasts and islands of Thailand. We had planned to go there last October, but because the weather forecast was terrible, we went to Laos instead.

So here we are, finally. The weather forecast is again very bad, but so far, on day 3, we have had mostly good weather.

We are staying on Phi Phi island, which is unarguably very beautiful, but unfortunately, it's been turned into a mess by tourism and/or poor management of the land.

The town is densely packed with bars and restaurants. massage parlours(?) and multiple tattoo shops. It's the first place in Asia where English tourists are the majority, and the whole place is set up to cater for them.

On the pretty beach behind the town, bars blast out music with heavy baselines, so loud it can be clearly heard 2km away. That goes on till 3am.

We are rather lucky to be far from town, but not far enough to escape the baselines. It's also not that easy to get to our place as the coastal path is in poor shape. Beware of twisting ankles.

The place itself has some charm, with huts on stilts in the jungle facing the beautiful bay, but the staff are often unfriendly and incapable of simple tasks. The manager is quite helpful, but she is not on site and is only reachable on chat. Very strange setup. It's cheap at $65 per day for all of us, but it's not for me, as you may have guessed already.Læs mere