Goodbye Railay... Hello Ko Phi Phi!

Our next destination after Railay was the Phi Phi islands -Phi Phi Don, where all the accommodation is, and Phi Phi Ley with its awesome day trips. The only way to spend the night on P.P. Ley is to camp in the national park. It is where the movie "The Beach" was filmed, but it is most famous for its fantastic scuba diving.


To get to Ko Phi Phi, we took a morning ferry boat from Railay. While we waited on the shoreline for the boat to arrive, I noticed movement on the beach. It was dozens of tiny crabs. As I continued watching, I saw them every so often simultaneously scurry about in a frenzy as if it had been scheduled, but I could not determine what it was that set them off.



Eventually the ferry boat arrived. Because it was low tide, we had to trudge out in the mud to a longtail boat which transported us to the ferry. It was another hot and cloudless day on the ferryand we cooled off with the breeze on the upper deck. On the ride over, people started pointed down at the water so we peered over the railing. There were dozens of jellyfish in the water of many shapes, sizes and colours. They were everywhere!




The ferry arrived at Tonsai Pier on Phi Phi Don. We navigated our way through the town to the opposite side of the isthmus, Ao Lo Dalum. We found tiny thatched huts for 300B close to the beach. The hut is quite rustic. It has a front porch with a hammock. The front door is locked with a padlock. The main room has a bed, a fan, and a mosquito net. The back room is lowered off the stilts onto a concrete slab on the ground with a flush toilet and a showerhead. That's it. I loved it!


Our hut, albeit cute, was not without its faults. There were plenty of holes in the thatching which meant all kinds of wildlife could get their way in. We ended up with three regular "friends" that we gave names to. The first and most friendly was Oreo, a black and white cat that loved to nap on our front porch. There are cats EVERYWHERE on this island, a nice change from the overpopulation of dogs we have seen most places.

Our second friend was Nik-Nak the gecko, which Beau named after the James Bond movie that also connects to the tour we'd taken the day before. Nik-Nak was shy and I only saw him twice.


Our third "friend" was Speedy Gonzalez the cockroach, so appropriately named because he was able to avoid Beau's attempts to catch him the first night we found him inside the hut. Man, he could move fast!


Our hut was perfectly located in between the main streets of the town and the beach. Ao Lo Dalum beach is small and nestled in a well protected bay that prevented waves. The only downside was that it was incredibly shallow and you had to walk through HOT water for a long time before getting to water deep enough and cool enough to take a dip in.


On the plus side, it was facing west which meant we were able to catch more of those amazing rainy season sunsets with their brilliant colours. It was very easy to fall in love with the beauty of the island, which boded well for our future excursions to the sister island, Phi Phi Ley!