Thailand Day 8 - 10

Day 8
23 January

Dear Family

Today we dubbed our first official 'beach day' where we were going to spend the whole day on the beach! We were going to the famous Long Beach! This beach faces southwest looking over Phi Phi Leh. The water is a magnificent turquoise blue with soft white sand. To get here we had to catch a long tail boat! This was an experience we would recommend to anyone going to Thailand! A long tail boat is a wooden narrow boat with the engine chilling way behind the boat at the end of a long steel pole! A local Thai dude maneuvers this boat and you feel as though the boat is going to flood with water! This boat took us to Long Beach which took about 5 mins to get there! 

Long beach is considered to be the best beach on the island - white sand, clear water and some nice snorkeling! We chilled there all day, snorkeled and then ate lunch at a restaurant on the beach! We were there the whole day! :) 
We then caught another taxi boat back, went for a drink on the beach where we had watched the fire show and Brett played volleyball with some of the locals and guys worked at the bar while Boxy chilled catching up with the rest of the world on her iPad while having a beer! We then walked back to our hotel to go swim in the pool that overlooks the sea!  We were staying at P.P. Princess Hotel! This was the most expensive place we stayed at but it was totally worth it! Phi Phi was packed with people On Koh Phi Phi the island is so tiny at everyone walks or rides their bicycles! There at Thai guys who push massive metal trolleys down the 'roads' (if we can even call them that because they are more like sidewalks) and as soon as this guy goes 'beep beep' behind you, you know you have to move out the way so he can pass! We got ready to go out for dinner but first we got a full body massage, we did some shopping and our favorite past time: bartering! As we were walking out for dinner we saw our old friend, Max in the distance and we left it that way! Bye-bye Max!  

Day 9
24 January

Dear Family

Today we organised a half day tour to get a true idea of what Koh Phi Phi has to offer! We woke up 6:30. Breakfast,went to pickup point for the 'all in 1 fun tour'! Our Tour group consisted of people from Britain and New Zealand plus us! We first went snorkeling in the area where we saw a few black tip reef sharks (they don't bite!) - but a shark is a shark and we were swimming near them in very shallow water! Anyways, we saw the sharks and other sea life such as tiny nemo's! Although the coral looks dead there are still so many different kinds of fish living off it! Then we were back on the boat and were off to do some cliff diving! We jumped off an 8m and then 10m cliff into the sea - so scary but so cool! So cliff diving - tick off our Thailand Bucket List! 

Back on the boat and off we went to Phi Phi Leh to see the bay. Then we went to Maya Bay where the movie 'The Beach' was filmed with good old Leonardo Di Caprio! Overboard crowded with so many tours there, clearly it was the place to be! Anyhow it was beautiful there and really cool to see it! Then it was back on the boat in search of turtles :) the coolest sea animals ever! The water was much deeper there but we saw 2 turtles and they were so beautiful and chilled as they cruised under the sea! Honestly one of the highlights of our trip! Thank you Thailand! That was the big finale to our half day trip and last day on Koh Phi Phi! We are now on the ferry off to Phuket!

We arrived at some pier/port in Phuket and now needed to make our way to Fasie and Fiona! We caught a shuttle with so e other people to Chalong Bay. Apparently this was wrong as we needed to go to Rawai (a different suburb or area which is 2 minutes from Chalong). Sometimes trying to communicate or understand people is the most difficult thing! :) We eventually got to Tesco's Rawai and Fasie fetched us from there! We went out for dinner that evening to one of their favorite restaurants on the water's edge and this was where we would eat for the next few nights! They had a couple from New Zealand staying with them, Willy and Joe as well as Adrian. Dinner was awesome and it was a great evening after an entire afternoon of traveling. 

Day 10
25 January

Dear Family

This morning we decided to do some tourist stuff and visited Phuket's famous Big Buddha and Ao Chalong Temple in a taxi that cost us 1000 baht!!! Phuket's Big Buddha is one of the island's most important and revered landmarks. The huge image sits on top of the Nakkerd Hills between Chalong and Kata and at 45 metres high it is easily seen from far away. They are still building Big Buddha and the view from there is amazing and you look out onto Phuket from all angles! The Ao Chalong temples were also awesome to see!  There is a saying among Thai tourists that if you are visiting Phuket but have not yet set foot in Wat Chalong, then you have not really arrived on the island.

Fasie and Fiona took us to on a sight seeing drive along the coast as we were on our way to Brett's scuba diving! We had pad thai chicken for lunch then Brett went scuba diving and got a bit of a refresher's course while fasie and Fiona went for a massage, and Boxy chilled on the beach until it started raining and decided to go for her 7th massage ;-) after that we went for a drink with the owner of the scuba diving shop and we played pool! Boxy is not too bad :) With a 2-1 victory to Brett :) after that we booked golden tickets to the "greatest show in Thailand", FANTASEA!!! We were picked up by the shuttle in Karon and at the cultural theme park we had dinner (pad thai chicken and fish and chips) and watched the Fisherman's Band! We then walked around a bit and went to the 'Tiger' where we could see them behind glass and we took some pics. Then we went to the show where we had to hand in our cameras and phone. Walking in you could pay to get your photo taken with a baby tiger! So cute! The show itself was awesome!!! There were elephants, chickens, trapeze artists, magic, fireworks, doves, goats, dancers etc. We watched as trapeze artists swung from the ceiling, elephants knew when to kneel down and lean on each other in a straight line, doves knew which exit to fly into as they came from somewhere in the back of the theatre, goats ran across the stage while chickens knew to run from one side to the other all following each other! The magic tricks were unreal and we honestly didn't know how they did what they did! After the show we had pics with the baby elephants and we bought an ice cream, caught a shuttle home through Patong's 'dodgy'/party street!