Ko Pi Pi and the Beach

Our time on Ko Lanta was good but relatively uneventful. We got some rain the second day and so spent it in town doing some shopping and looking for a book. The changerooms were quite funny, ranging from a hidden corner of the store to a curtain you pull around yourself leaving you with room to do more or less nothing,especially not change! The next day was a full beach day - no shoes allowed! We walked the 2 km beach back and forth for each meal, with Kev kindly running back to our room as needed. We played in the waves quite a bit and managed to avoid a burn, which always feels like success. Also, I almost forgot, we had Thai massages - amazing! Just before dinner we were in this open air hut, lying on mattress, shaded by hanging sheets, listening to the waves roar as our bodies were contorted. Incredible.

We took a taxi (pickup truck) to the pier the morning we left Ko Lanta. There was a couple already in the back and we stopped to pick up four Swedes, all of us had backpacks, who knew you could hold that much stuff in the box of a truck. Our boat ride to Ko Pi Pi was good. On the way we could see Pi Pi Leh, the island where the movie "The Beach" was shot. Ko Pi Pi is easily the busiest place we've been. You walk the streets accosted by offers for accomodation, thai massage, pedicures, bathing suits, flip flops, thai pancakes, buckets of alcohol and pringles. Bikes ride by you at crazy speeds on the very narrow roads carrying everything from bird cages to entire families. There is no motorized vehicles, which is nice for noise especially. Cyclists ring their bells or yell "beep" before blasting by. People easily speak more English here than anywhere else we've been in Thailand. The nightlife is also much more evident (ie. the island doesn't shut down after the sun goes down and everyone has eaten dinner). Kev and I still pathetically go to bed completely wiped at 9:00pm. Some British boys beside us don't seem to realize the no windows concept and we hear every colourful conversation and party tune but mostly it just makes us feel like we're not THAT old.

We went on an amazing snorkelling trip yesterday which allowed us to see the whole island from a long tail as well as Pi Pi Leh. The limestone cliffs are insane, with overhangs, caves and beautiful colours. Pi Pi Leh, is quite uninhabitable looking with the exception of the very famous beach. Our boat took us into one narrow bay with cliffs nearly surrounding us, the greenest water you've ever seen and we were able to swim there. It was beautiful and strangely reminded me of Canadian natural hot springs (to be fair the water is 29 to 30 degrees C). Our boat driver threw out watermelon rinds - often hitting us in the heads but we think his main purpose was to reduce the garbage on the boat which is probably not the best - while we snorkelled in the middle of nowhere and fish surrounded us nibbling away. If you held a piece they would feed from you directly. Not that I'm too excited about this composting technique but arguing would probably not have been appropriate. We went to a beautiful island called bamboo island as well and visited "Monkey Beach" which appropriately enough had a number of monkeys. They were fun and all but Rose started to pout once she realized that people were feeding them chips. Despite the beauty Thailand is not necessarily the environmentalist's dream. I'm learning just how clean Canada is. Not that it's only locals, tourists don't appear to be much better in many instances. Anyways, otherwise the beach was beautiful with some of the nicest sand and water we've seen.

The only other news (I'm sure this is plenty anyways) is that we decided to do our PADI open water dive course and had our first day today. We've successfully scubad to 3 metres or so and are going out on the ocean tomorrow for two dives. I'm ecstatic as this is something that I've wanted to do forever and we're getting to do it together. We have an instructor for just the two of us, which is great and makes for quick learning.

Once we finish we'll leave Pi Pi and go to Krabi, which is on the mainland. We're hoping to manage a couple of inland things like trekking and waterfalls before flying down to KL, Malaysia and taking a bus to Singapore for our flight to Australia. We're almost half way done all of a sudden. Wishing everybody well. Happy birthday Theresa!