I took one of those packaged snorkeling trip + lunch deals with a travel company. It was…interesting! The boat had room for 619 people and there were 619 people, about 590 Asians, a handful of Indians and like 6 white people. Funny thing, white people don’t stick together!
There’s 2 parts of Ko Phi Phi (ko pee pee)- Don & Ley. The boat stopped at Don to drop some people off and then on to Ley for the snorkeling. The scenery is stunning.
Ko Phi Phi is beautiful, and a hot, crowded mess at the same time. After the lunch, I started hunting for a hotel. Everything I looked at was pretty expensive. Then I went to one of the booking agents that have pictures of all the hotels and prices. Mistake. It looked like 1000 bhat was about the cheapest thing I could get with A/C, from what the guy showed me. I was kind of tried of looking at pictures so I just went with one of the ones he picked. 12 minute walk to get there wasn’t bad, a guy moved my bags on one of those big carts.
But, the place was a dump. It did have A/C and wifi, but I overpaid for it. Turns out “the pool” isn’t actually onsite. It’s a 10 minute walk, which I did. When I got there, there’s a sign that says I would need to pay 30 bhat to use the pool! I didn’t get in, just laid out in the hot sun for a bit until I couldn’t take it. Anyway the place looks like crap, paint falling off the walls, stains everywhere, light fixtures broken and not nice owners of the place.
After a nap, I headed into town and walked around a bit. Suddenly, I felt CRAZY tired, and started moving really slowly, then I had to sit down. The temps aren’t that much hotter than Bali (about 90 here), but I’m having a tough time with the heat so far. I grabbed a gatorade and some coconut peanuts (yep these are to die for), and sat for about an hour, but it wasn’t helping much. I grabbed dinner (Taco Tuesday!!!!), and could see from the looks around me that this was a party island. It was getting louder and louder and tons of people were getting ready to hit the bars- while I was getting ready to hit the bed!
Made it back to my guest house around 9 and did a couple emails and was ready to pass out. Grabbed the sheet and pulled it up and….WTF was that????? Pretty sure a cockroach just ran across my bed. Great! I searched all over the room and the bed for it, but I couldn’t find it. Now, I’m exhausted and I’ve got a roach running loose in my room, and the music from the clubs is blaring into my room at this point I turned the bathroom light on, put my headphones on, and was in and out of sleep all night. Never saw that roach again but I could hear loud neighbors late at night.
This morning I headed out on a hike to the viewpoint. Wow. Worth all the hassles.
Ok about to catch my boat to Railey Beach (rock climbing place).
I just talked to some Canadian girls who got totally ripped off on their room too, worse than me. The agent was even telling them they’re stupid! I’m noticing a huge difference from Bali that I didn’t expect- this constantly trying to rip tourists off just rarely happens on Bali!
Just Added! Video blog (from Ubud) : https://freedomlovin.com/2012/03/23/nusa-lombogan-to-ubud/
