It's Fee Fee and We Know it!

After a long recovery period of illnesses and food poisoning, we are finally ready to party on Phi Phi Island! We woke up Thursday morning, February 7th, had breakfast in a taxi and took the ferry over to Phi Phi. Of course we arrived at the hottest point of the day and per Struggle Cityyy usual had difficulty locating our accommodation and not a single person at the pier was of assistant, but only laughed and pointed in a general direction.

It's Phi Phi!

Phi Phi town - shops, restaurants, dive centers

Phi Phi is a small island with only foot traffic and bicycles. We quickly learned it was peak season and found it challenging to navigate the tiny streets with 40 lbs on our backs... Asking every booking place where "Golden Hill Bungalows" was, again to be pointed a general "that way". After a gruelling 30 minutes and up a mini mountain, we found our accommodation to be the furthest away from anything. It has Great views (minus the trash and water runoff lake in front of us) and a pool, but is inconveniently located. This worked to our advantage though, because it was so far away we never were there except to sleep, and were undisturbed by the loud bar music. Not to mention our room had a single fan with one speed: slow.

Golden Bungalows

Treacherous climb to our bungalow 

Our messy messy room (3 beds in a row)

That afternoon we wandered back down to the town to find the #1 restaurant by Trip Advisor - Anna's Restaurant. Whilst stumbling around, we bumped into a mate from Australia who gave us some good suggestions of things to do while in Phi Phi, which was great! We found Anna's and had a lovely afternoon lunch then trekked back up and spent the day at our pool overlooking our trash lake. We discussed what we wanted to do while we're here and planned out the next few days including booking a half day tour for Friday. Per our mate's recommendation, that evening we went and saw some bad live music and an Ok fire show and called it a night because we were all tired and still on antibiotics.

Fire Show

Friday morning we got up ate a quick breakfast on the steps of 7-11 waiting to be collected for our tour. We took a Thai long boat to some awesome spots including a cave, a gorgeous swimming cove, some sweet snorkelling, Maya Bay (where "The Beach" was filmed) and monkey beach (that was covered in trash). It was a really great tour, we got some wicked photos and funny videos (like how much we hate Thailand and love Phi Phi - pronouncing it "fee fee"). After the tour we were pretty tired so got some shakes, postcards , sat at the beach and took naps. When we woke up, the tide was so low you could walk way past all the boats it was really cool!

Maya Bay

Phi Phi at low tide

Low tide

Beached Thai Boats

Now that we were all 100% recovered and it was Friday night we agreed to have a big night out - but only wanted to stick with beer. We decided to go to the Thai restaurant, Lemongrass that we ate at the previous night because it was delicious, but it didn't open till 6:30 ... so we got fresh donuts and beer instead. We enjoyed our healthy dinner at an Internet cafe where we struggled to get anything done, then got ready and partied with beers at the loud beach bars - Slinky, Woodys and Stones.

Struggle Cityyy night out

We woke up Saturday morning with awful beer hangovers and agreed that Leo beer wasn't a good choice. We grabbed lunch in town and took a boat taxi to Long Beach, quickly realising once we got there that we should have brought our snorkel gear.. Oops! So we just hung out on the beach, sat in the water with lots of fish and got tan on our ma'ams.

Long Beach (isn't very long..?)

Long Beach

Checking out the rocks at Long Beach

When we got back to Phi Phi, we were hungry (as usual) and bought more donuts (double fisting) as the Thai donut shop man laughed at us and offered us free donuts if we came back tomorrow. Since we didn't make it to Lemongrass last night, we ate there Saturday and were sorely disappointed - especially because it was so good the first time. That night, we did not drink Leo's but red bull vodkas, played beer pong and had a photo shoot with a monkey in a diaper. We went to the beach bars again (with loud music) danced and drank the infamous Thai redbull buckets. It was a fun night, ending in bottles of water and cookies in our beds.

BUCKETS!

BUCKETS!

Sunday morning we were thankful for the lack of beer hangover, but the redbull hangover was a whole nother story. We struggled to lunch at Anna's again and did not move for nearly 2 hours, then crawled to the beach where we continued to feel bad. kayaking was not happening today.. By early afternoon we agreed we should just start drinking again!

We sat at a beach bar for the afternoon getting weird, enjoying Singha beers and not the rubbing alcohol coconut shakes. We stumbled back to our pool and drank more beers while we got ready to have another night out. We heard the fire performance at Stones bar is the best on the island, so we posted up there around 8:30 and enjoyed a Stones treat and watched the show... Kerri was even invited on stage!!

Monday morning we wandered down the pier to try to hire a boat taxi to Bamboo Island for a half day. We were advised that the weather was too windy, so it would be extra expensive to get out there. A bit peeved, we walked around a bit but it was too hot to hike or kayak so eventually we found a boat taxi that would take us to Bamboo Island! Yay! We got in the long boat and as soon as we were out of the cove we discovered just HOW choppy it was! The boat driver took the long way around the island as we giggled in terror, white knuckled for the hour long journey to the island. Again, arriving at mid day - we waded in high tide water covering the gorgeous beach around the island. Definitely the most beautiful beach we have seen on this trip. Due to the big waves, our boat driver instructed us to meet him on the other side of the island. Little did we know we would have to clamber over treacherous rocks to get there. Barefoot and with two large bags, the three of us scrambled over the rocks, laughing and cursing at the same time. We laughed about how this was supposed to be a relaxing day that turned into death boat ride and shoeless "rock climbing." We found our boat and set off for the journey back, which was shorter however much more terrifying as the waves were white tipped and Alexis had to sit backwards as she couldn't watch. At one point a giant wave crashed into the boat, which inspired an emergency plan we concocted, "we can totally swim, there's the life jackets!" Our Thai driver who had been stone faced all day cracked up at our scream and duck from the large wave that came into our boat. Later looking at a map, we realised that toughest part of our journey was actually right over "Shark Point" - which many day trips are advertised that if you don't see a shark then you get your money back. Needless to say, we were veryyy happy to be back on land. Despite our efforts to make this a pain free leisurely day trip - it was absolutely out most Struggle Cityyy moment to date.

Bamboo Island

Thai Boats in Phi Phi

Struggly Cityyy at Bamboo Island

Struggle Cityyy at the Look Out

We had an adventurous afternoon climbing to the Phi Phi look out, enjoyed a nice dinner and went out for one last night on Phi Phi. Although we had an incredible time, we were all ready to leave and really excited to get to Koh Samui and Koh Tao!

Xoxo
Laura, Alexis & Kerri