Phi Phi Island - Feb 2010

I am now on the Island of Phi Phi and in many ways the game has completely changed.

After we left Bangkok we returned to Phuket and found that the lovely chaps at the Last Paradise Guest House had organized a room for us even though they didn’t know when we would be back or if indeed we were still alive.  I am very thankful for that and even more thankful that the taxi driver who took us from the airport managed to stay awake.  Holly and I could see his eyes in the rear view mirror and he kept falling asleep, at one point he had to stop and pour a bottle of cold water over his face.  We sat in complete silence gripping each other’s hands until the ordeal was over.  It reminded me of the first time I ever properly drove a car when I was in LA a few years back. We had had a fairly wild night out somewhere and my American friends’ Mother came to pick us up in her frankly massive SUV that was made all the more worrying by the fact that they had put on oversize wheels so the speedometer didn’t give you the right reading.  I had tried to learn the basics watching Chris drive it earlier in the day and he let me drive it round the block with his help and I was pretty pleased with that.  So, I was telling their mother this when she came to the bar to pick us up and she offered to let me have a shot of driving the car home, it was an automatic and she would be sitting right beside me so thought it would be fine.  What she didn’t know however was that I was just sick all over a toilet cubicle, Robbie B and my own shoes following a day long alcohol binge and a particularly nasty shot of something or other.  The rest of the boys, of which I think there were at least 6 of (that’s how big this fucking car was!) didn’t really catch on to what was happening until we got into the car and realized that I was the one who was backing the car up and heading off down the street.  From this point I have never heard a group of Banff Boys (Scotland and California divisions, respectively) at the end of a night out so completely silent.  Because it was their Mother in the front seat telling them it would be OK they pretty much had to deal with it.  The look of utter fear in their eyes as we crossed a bridge was only trounced by the look on my face when a Police car began to follow us as we were coming off the bridge.  I was told to ‘stay cool’ and to my surprise the following car exited down a side street after a minute or so.  The warm breath from the sighs of relief completely negated the cars air-con and made the whole other business of parking all the more sweatier.  Although I in no way condone or promote such dalliances with the law and the safety of my friends, and myself it will always be a fond memory…for me at least!

And now, back to the present.  We stayed at the Last Paradise for a few more days so we could sort out the particulars of our new plan to explore South East Asia.  The plan was to buy a second hand Motorbike and get a custom built sidecar made (they are everywhere here, people carry their whole families on them) with a lock box and a seat on it so we could both travel around the country with our bags in tow.  We had pretty much got it all sorted for a pretty good price and had planned a basic route around the country and I was very excited about the freedom doing it this way would provide us.  Then I did what I always do…I ‘googled the banter’.  This is a surefire way to freak yourself out, if you get bitten by a bug then suddenly you read on forums and websites that there is a chance it could be a fucking killer ninja spider and you would turn black and die within 3 days or your ears will fall off.  Anyway, I got to reading about all the Thai laws and the regulations of the roads and access to countries like Vietnam and Cambodia and freaked myself out.  If you are in Thailand in on a tourist visa then you cannot get the right papers.  The vehicle comes with something called a ‘green book’, which outlines the vehicles history, and must correlate to a ‘blue book’ that is attached to a Thai property and name.  Without these things you cannot get road tax or insurance for the vehicle.  If you go through all the websites on bikes, ex-pats and the forums from people who have done it all before then you get a 50/50 split between ‘you can bribe anyone here and get away with it’ or ‘I’ve not had any paperwork or a licence and have been here 20 years’ and ‘if you get caught you are fucked’.  The resounding thought that I had was that I wouldn’t even consider doing anything like this in my own country or America or even most of Europe so why would I show such little respect as to break the law here.  Common sense prevailed and disappointingly we figured it wasn’t worth the risk. God forbid any kind of accident would happen but if it did we would be seriously shafted, so now we’re gonna do it by bus and I imagine it will make the Glasgow to London for a Tenner trip seem like flying Concorde. Pfft.

At the start when I said that everything has changed now we are on Phi Phi I am not kidding.  We got the ferry out here and immediately there was a breath of fresh air.  The ferry itself was filled with younger people (and even a guy who was the spitting image of old Leo DiCaprio, Holly sneaked a photo) who seemed to have a little lighter step and a more optimistic view on the world.  After about 10 mins on the boat we bought some beers and got chatting to a lovely young Aussie couple on their holidays and an Irish guy with some good patter who had been teaching in Taiwan for 8 months.  We had been staying in Yanui and hanging out with much older people for the last couple of weeks and apart from Natalie and Mike (who is 42 but acts 22) we hadn’t really hung out with anyone our own age so this was quite surprisingly, to me at least, really nice.  It turned out that the Aussie guy, Mike and I had a ton in common and he was very much not your stereotypical ‘Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy, Oi, Oi, Oi’ kinda guy and his girlfriend Natalie was the same age as Holly so they hit it off no problem.  I also got a much needed dose of patter from James, the Irish guy who would hold his own without a hitch with any of my friends at home.

We got onto the Island and to our surprise the place we had booked to stay at (the night before) had arranged for a longtail boat to come and pick us up from the pier.  We didn’t realize that there are pretty much not cars or motorbikes on this island and the only way to get about it by boat, walking through jungle, swimming or customizing a kids bike or BMX into a Hello Kitty themed fanny magnet.  If you’ve been anywhere else in Thailand you’ll appreciate how refreshing this is, although the boats are pretty expensive.  We had booked to stay at a place called Phi Phi Hill for 700 Baht a night, for that we got our own spacious Bungalow with a sea view, a toilet, shower, deck with chairs and a solitary fan which was a pretty good deal.  The place was right at the end of Long Beach which was a hell of a lot quieter than the other beaches but still had a few bars, restaurants and a couple of dive centres.  As it was so secluded and chilled out it was the premier spot for going topless, which, excuse the pun has it’s perks!  With the bungalow, the clue was in the name…it was indeed on a hill, a very steep one so you have to ascend steps that are themselves like a hill.  Imagine each step is like a ramp so you’re constantly leaning back as you walk up them, which totally kills you!  Luckily they had a pulley system like you would see in a coal mine to take our heavy bags up to the top of the steps but after that we had to go to the other side of the hill (a cliff) to get to the bungalow.

That afternoon we went and met the guys we had hung out with on the Ferry trip and drank some buckets, played some pool and had some laughs.  We had heard that there was a bar that had a boxing ring in it and let tourists get up and have a go at Muay Thai Kickboxing so thought we would give that a peek.  We were all pretty blootered by this point so the others convinced me to get up and fight.  I thought fuck it, When in Rome and all that and gave it a bash…you also got a free bucket for fighting whether you win or lose.

Luckily we had arrived quite early and I hadn’t seen any of the other fights, some of which were very scary indeed with big guys from all over the world who had come here to train in the many Muay Thai gyms.  I got pretty lucky as I was fighting an Irish guy about the same size as me who didn’t have a Genghis Khan complex.  They provide you with gloves and headgear and you go at it for 3 rounds.  I spoke to the Irish guy beforehand and we decided we would take it easy, then the bell rang and he came out like a fucking hurricane pelting me with punches!  I was quite taken aback but managed to give as good as I got swearing to myself that he was getting a hiding in the next round.  Unfortunately, he threw in the towel after the first round and that was that.  I won the match but it didn’t really feel like it as we’d only had one round.  The next night Mike from Oz and another Mike from England signed up to fight but for them it was a very different story.  Mike from Oz had done a lot of Martial Arts in his time and was still pretty limber with the kicking etc… he was to fight a French guy who looked like a more handsome Ashley Cole with a dazzling smile.  Surely he was a lover, not a fighter so we thought Mike would have it in the bag.  When it came time to fight he had his shirt off and revealed a build not too dissimilar to Bruce Lee’s!  He also said that he’d never fought before but when the bell rang he knew exactly what he was doing, Mike held his own and it was probably the most even fight I had seen all night but in the end the ref awarded Ashley Cole the victory.  Now, mike from England, a very handy looking, tall, well built Cockney Geezer was up next and his opponent was friend of the last guy, also French but this guy was around 6’2, black as 2 in the morning and built like a brick shithouse.  This guy knew exactly what he was doing and Cockney Mike got a leathering.  Most of the other fighters moved their heads, ducked and dived but this guy just stared ahead like Shadow from the Gladiators not moving his head once while he relentlessly pummeled poor Mike.  I saw him a couple of days later sheepishly wearing his sunglasses at night to cover his black eye.  A wee shame.

Phi Phi Island is definitely the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life, I’m not even exaggerating when I say that, I was actually taken aback by how amazing it looks when we arrived.  There isn’t really much to it, some parts are busier than others and that suits us because you can choose to go to the bit with all the bars and people or juts hang out on the quieter beaches..  I think the thing that makes it look so good is the water, it is crystal clear and because most of the area is shallow you get a kind of emerald green, turquoise glow coming from it and you can see right to the bottom with all the fish and even sharks in between.  The view all around you is off steep cliff faces with green trees all over the top and vines hanging down.  The horizon is nothing but sea and the smaller island, Phi Phi Ley which has no-one living on it but you can get tours around it, which is what most people actually come here for.  This is the place that they filmed the movie the Beach, so if you’ve seen that then you’ll get an idea as to how beautiful it is.  I could go into more poetic descriptions of the beauty here but I always feel that kinda ruins it for me with things I read, you know when people can’t talk about harmonies without them being ‘transcendental’ or the heat ‘searing’ or the pain ‘exquisite’!  Quite simply this place is ‘pure braw’, enough said.  I’ll set aside some time to go and take pictures so you can see for yourself.

We done the tour of the smaller island with the Aussie couple via a long tail boat driven by a charming wee man called Mustapha who looked a treat in pink.  We swam in the famous lagoon and at Maya Bay and also went to Monkey Bay.  Monkey Bay was pretty dirty with a lot of rubbish lying all over the beach and the apes were sifting through it looking for food.  I thought this pretty bad at first until I realized the reason for it.  Holly was feeding them water from a bottle, this all seemed fine and was infact pretty amazing seeing all these wee monkeys grabbing onto the end of the bottle and drinking from it, one of them even had some of my beer!  All was going well until an older monkey came up and jumped up on Holly and tried to bite her face.  I stepped in and another couple jumped up and hung off my arm scratching me. We had to hot foot it into the sea before they really hurt us, wee bastards.  So, that’s how it gets so messy, people come and give them food then attack them and they have to run away before they can pick up the rubbish.  Again, wee bastards but they were pretty cool to see.  Later that day we all came to the beach that Holly and I are staying at and got to kicking a ball around with a couple of the diving instructors that were hanging out on the beach as there were no customers that day.  Later on one of them, Jay, a guy from Puerto Rico came and joined us for a chat and a drink.  Now, this guy is pretty much the sexiest man I have ever seen in real life!  He is 37 but looks younger than me, has a perfect surfer body, dreadlocks to his ass, Spanish skin and accent, perfectly straight and dazzlingly white teeth and even fucking blue eyes, which you don’t often see on Central Americans.  I asked him if he wanted a beer and he said no, I asked what he drank and he said in his smooth, slow Spanish accent ‘I driiiinnnkkk wiiiinnnne’.  Holly just about slid off her seat!  Despite all this he is actually an extremely nice man that has been travelling the world surfing and teaching Scuba Diving and decided to settle here in Thailand for a while.  That night we met up with him for a drink in the bar on the beach and we all had a really good time. We ended up limbo dancing under burning poles and doing that fire stick malarkey that everyone seems to do at night around here.  There are twins at the beach bar closest to us who look the absolute double of Cedric and Omar from The Mars Volta, afros and everything and they are amazing at the fire stuff.  We got to talking with some of the other dive instructors (including a cracking lad from Wales) and they explained how easy it is to get your Dive Master certification and get work all over the world in beautiful places.  Holly has always loved the sea and has dived in Australia before so this idea planted itself firmly in her head.  She got hopelessly drunk that night, fell off the path back to our Bungalow and doesn’t remember swimming in the sea at 1 in the morning so I said we could discuss it over the next day or so.   It seems like a good idea and she really wants to do it so I agreed to stay here for as long as her course takes and fork out the money for her to do it.  Maybe one day I’ll be a kept man as she teaches diving but for now I’m gonna have to amuse myself while she is learning to dive with the sexiest man on the Island.  Bastards, aw ae them!

Holly has started her course and we have moved to a much more basic bungalow, a hut really that at home would be classed as a sauna but only costs us 400 baht a night.  I have just spent the morning gaffa taping up all the holes in the walls so that insects can’t get in and devour us in the night.  As I said, it’s really basic but it’s all we need really.  I just wish it wasn’t so fucking hot!  There is a communal shower and Asian style toilets (a pure whitey by the way) and we even have our own crusty Berlin punk as a our neighbour who sits outside drinking Chang Beer all day with his bleached blonde double Mohawk.  A real classy joint I’m sure you’ll agree.

So now my days will consist of drinking copious amounts of fruit shakes in the morning, avoiding the intense sun in the afternoon and proclaiming ‘Fuck it, Geez a Bucket!’ at night.

It could be worse.

Crag