Phi Phi Island & more snorkelling

My last day in Phuket – after a lot of messing around with the hotel tour manager who, as nice as she was to me, couldn’t seem to get a simple date right when talking to the tour company, I was finally confirmed on the Phi Phi trip.  Finally, the weather had cleared up completely and it was a beautiful sunny day.

Snorkeling is high on the agenda for this tour, so it was another opportunity to practice with my waterproof housing.  My shots were better this time, but it’s still very hard to track a subject, and the with pressure the housing still presses buttons it shouldn’t.  I might have to work out some sort of foam buffer to sit around the button area.  I also chose the wrong snorkeling set to take it down.  Later in the day we dived a fantastic reef and I left it in the boat.  That decision did allow me to enjoy the views, and practice my equilisation techniques whilst diving as deep as I could.

Monkey beach is one of the few places in the world where monkeys enter the sea.  These guys come out to meet the incoming hordes, in the hope of food. Whilst most of the clan are not that keen on the water, and running away shreaking whenever a wave breaks near them, one little guy was showing off near me, performing duck dives and somersaults under the water.  Despite multiple warnings not to get too close, two people were scratched.  You can’t tell some people.

One of the most enjoyable things to do when in Asia is collect examples of bad English. I didn’t get a photo of the “Sham” motor workshop, but I would go so far as to say that this particular business would not be out of place in some parts of Australia. This expensive speedboat hasn’t had a comparable budget put aside for the sign-writing…

Leonardo DiCaprio’s leading role in The Beach did more for this particular bay than any other marketing exercise.  You can, in fact, book the very disgusting room in which he stayed in Bangkok.  This is The Beach, and these are some of the long-tail boats used for short trips amongst the islands and for fishing on calmer days.

Phi Phi Island was beautiful, and these huts look very tempting for a later return.

I don’t remember what island this is, but it is indicative of the hundreds, if not thousands, of nature’s dramatic punctuations in the otherwise  vast, crystal blue ocean of this region.

The boat dropped us onto an island for one last swim and a cocktail before heading home. I decided to do some rock-pool exploring, and stumbled upon a nest of three, maybe four Banded Sea Kraits.  I’m told that these are the most poisonous sea snakes in the world.  These guys were resting in tiny pools of water during low tide.

I have been rushing from one place to another so far, and haven’t had a great deal of time for R&R.  To prove that I actually did stop and take a break, here’s my first Singapore Sling for the trip.  I was supposed to drink this in Raffles in Singapore, but time didn’t allow me to get there.

On my final day in Phuket I realised that I hadn’t captured much of the daily lives of people here, so I snapped a few views out the front windscreen of our bus. Almost everyone gets around on small motorbikes, and you’ll often see families of three or even four crammed in tight onto one. This little girl looked like she was doing the steering and having a great time.

Mornings and nights will find hundreds of trucks loaded with workers, ranging from factory and farm laborers to hotel staff. This is one of the smaller ones. I’ve seen them loaded with up to 30 people.