Getting ha-phi on Phi Phi

The captain threw a handful of fried rice overboard, and in a flash, the turquoise water turned bright yellow with fish vying for a snack. Quick as a whip, Alberto dipped a blue basket into the yellow mass, and the fish scattered. But not all of them were quick enough, and two little sergeant majors about the size of a hand were trapped.

There you have it: poor man’s fishing 101.

As the water drained from the bucket, the tiger-striped fish went deathly still. “Oh, no, we killed them,” I thought. But our captain assured us they were fine, and indeed, they seemed totally unfazed when Alberto tossed them back into the tepid Andaman Sea.

It was mid afternoon, and the weather had turned fine. But the day had dawned gray and drizzly, and Krista and I weren’t sure we’d be able to get out on the famous crystal clear waters surrounding the tiny Thai island of Ko Phi Phi.

Thankfully, the rain abated enough for 10 of us to pile into the Chonchita and motor off into the bay flanked by lush jungles over dramatic limestone mountains.

Now, tourism is big business in Thailand, and all the prettiest spots have been carved into resorts catering to the whims of the “farang” or foreigners. However, Phi Phi Le Island has been saved from such ecological rape in favor of an even more lucrative sort of pillaging. Here, they harvest swiftlet nests, which are touted as having medicinal benefits. Poor little birds, busily building their nests only to have people tear them down. Each one goes for hundreds of dollars.

We cruised past the swiftlets’ caves to the other side of the island, where we were unceremoniously dumped into the tumultuous sea and told to swim to shore. The shore was a sheer limestone cliff with a rickety set of wooden stairs slippery with moss and only one handrail. It was an unnerving game to make it to the steps without being battered against the stones or cutting up your feet and legs on the jagged rocks just beneath the surface of the water. (Three weeks later, the scabs are finally falling off my legs to reveal pink scar tissue.)

From there, we hiked barefoot across the island to Maya Bay, a pretty stretch of sand made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Beach, but sadly polluted by its popularity. I took a dip, but didn’t stay in for long for fear of getting trash stuck in my hair. It’s such a travesty that these most beautiful and previously pristine locations are sullied as uncaring people come to visit. They destroy that which they’ve come to admire. It’s the same story on Phi Phi – a gorgeous white ribbon of sand extending into sparkling water, and all of it freckled with plastic bottles, beer cans, food wrappers, lost sandals and other trash.

Bamboo Beach, a 20-minute boat ride from Phi Phi, however, has remained flawless. The island is mostly a national park inhabited by only a dozen fishing huts. Boatloads of tourists luxuriate on the unspoiled blond sand and bath carefree in the azure waters. Here, I truly felt I’d arrived at paradise – not too many people, no neon lights, no pushy vendors – hell, no vendors whatsoever. I would have loved to spend the whole day there, but the captain and the Spaniards, Alberto, Carlos and Pancho, were ready to move on to some snorkeling.

And the snorkeling around Phi Phi is some of the best I’ve experienced. We hit a couple different spots at different depths and paddled around taking in the sights: colors so brilliant it almost didn't seem natural, fish tarted up as if on their way to a party, big, undulating purple clams and twitchy bedazzled sea urchins. I even saw a moray eel, forbidding in his little cave.

Such wondrous sights, an overabundance of marine riches – it makes you feel fortunate to have seen them.

Check out my photo album "Getting Ha-phi on Phi Phi" on my facebook page.

The night ferry -- journey to Phi Phi

Night travel is the way to go. Not only does it save you on a night of accommodations, but since you’re sleeping most of the way, it makes the journey fly by.

With this mindset, Dave, Krista and I booked a night ferry from the island of Ko Pangan to east coast port town of Surat Thani. We’d made the reverse trip in a high-speed catamaran a few days before, and it took about an hour and a half. Going back on the night ferry would take us six and a half hour, making me wonder if the ferry is not, in fact, powered by diesel but by a school of mackerel instead.

The ferry itself was a wide, squat boat that very well may have been around since the turn of the last century. With our heavy packs on our backs, we teetered across the narrow gangplank, clinging to the single handrail.

Inside, the ceiling was no more than five and half feet tall – fine for me, but Dave practically had to drag his knuckles on the floor to get around. Thin twin-sized mattresses lined the floor on either side of the center aisle, with several raised cots crammed in to accommodate the most passengers possible. The air was stifling. We were there early, but we knew when the ferry was full, personal space would become nonexistent.

“Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?” we wondered aloud.

Krista sneakily trained the nearby fans to our mattresses and then went to scope out the facilities. She came back horrified and desperate for some hand sanitizer. I quietly vowed not to pee for the remainder of the trip.

As the clocked neared 10 p.m., we were ecstatic to find that there were only a handful of passengers aboard. We happily spread out, and I gluttonously doubled up on pillows. The steward opened the windows, and the fresh air and gentle rocking of the boat quickly sent us to sleep.

At 4:30 a.m., we were all startlingly awakened when all the lights in the cabin flashed back on. We groggily collected out things and disembarked to find a man waiting to take us to our bus terminal. The bus company helped us kill time by showing Jack Ass II, which frankly made me a little embarrassed to be American. And at 6:30 a.m., we got on the bus that would take us to the west coast port town of Krabi.

The sun shone brightly, and we gaped at the dramatic scenery of jagged limestone mountains and palm tree farms. We soon arrived at the ferry terminal, and just after noon, we docked at the picturesque island of Ko Phi Phi, marveling at the crystal clear, aquamarine seas, lush mountainsides and white sand beaches.

But true to form, while the sun shines on our travel days, the rain inevitably comes as soon as the packs are off our backs. We’d hardly finished lunch when the first downpour arrived. But such is the downside of traveling during monsoon season, and we’re sure as hell not gonna let it spoil our fun.

Diving with a whale shark

The left side of my head was on fire. I was seeing stars.

And as I looked at the wall of water above me, I started to panic. I inhaled sharply – too sharply – getting sea water in my mouth along with the life-sustaining air from the tank. I gagged. I coughed so hard, I nearly vomited. My ears were ringing.

I contemplated the surface. Should I risk it?

“Calm down, Nicole,” I told myself. “Cough if you need to. You can do that underwater. Hell, you can vomit into the regulator if you need to.”

I allowed myself a couple more deep coughs and then a few deep breaths. Then I turned my attention back to the pain – pain so bad that I was crying into my dive mask. Pinching my nose, I blew as hard as I could to relieve the pressure in my ears. The right one was easy – it always is. It’s the left one that has caused me problems for years, and today was no exception. It firmly refused to budge. I screamed into the water, bubbles rushing from my mouth.

I blew again. Nothing. Then a third time, and I heard it – that wonderful high-pitched squeak, like air being slowly released from a balloon, letting me know that the pressure in my ear was equalizing and that I could continue down into the depths of the beautiful Gulf of Thailand.

Getting down

It was pouring rain when Krista and I woke up that morning, and I wandered into the wet to ask the dive master if the trip was still on.

“Of course,” dive master Johnny trainee said in his soft Scottish bur. “Under the water is the best place to be in this weather.”

There were about 11 tourists to the five dive masters/trainees there. Since some were already experienced divers, Krista and I got some personal attention. We hadn’t planned on scuba diving, but our hotel has this brilliant free scuba trial in the pool. Its brilliance lies in the gratis price tag and in the fact that once a person experiences breathing under water, she really, really wants to try it again in open water.

Putting our balance to the test on the swaying boat, we slipped into our wetsuits – more for protection from the coral reef than from the temperature – strapped on our gear and plunged into the turbulent, bath-water-warm waters around Sail Rock, an hour off the coast of Ko (Island) Pangan.

While the waves battered us on the surface, there was nothing but peace and calm below.

During the morning dive, we focused on getting the ins and outs of diving fine tuned. Still, I managed to confuse some hand signals and took myself to the surface when I was only meant to rise a few feet. I threw a little hissy fit, angry that I was missing the action 18 meters below and angry that I had no one but myself to blame.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Johnny barked surfacing beside me.

“Fuck off,” I shot back.

We eyed each other for a heated second and decided to laugh. It was time for lunch anyway, so we paddled back to the boat and dug into some simple, but tasty, Thai fare – white rice, stir-fried pork with green beans and stir-fried veggies.

Meeting the beast

Reenergized, we dove back into the deep green sea alive with brightly colored fish, anemones and coral. As I took an electric shock to the wrist, I realized the waters were also alive with tiny jelly fish. Oh well, you take the good with the bad.

We were going deeper this time, and I was trying desperately to keep up with my dive team, but my ears had other plans. Eventually getting the pressure equalized, I caught up with the group just in time to see a most magnificent monster swim into view.

It was a whale shark – the biggest fish in the world, and an astounding beast to behold. I noticed the enormously wide mouth first, and thanked my stars whale sharks subsist mostly on plankton. There was a tiny eye on either side of the vast, flat head, and a beautiful checkerboard of yellow stripes and spots covered the tawny skin. No shark is complete without an entourage, and this one was accompanied by no fewer than a dozen other parasitic fish.

Our whale shark was young, just more than six meters long (they can grow to be more than 12 meters long), but as I swam alongside her, I realized her tail alone was taller than I am. It was awe inspiring and humbling to be in the water with such an amazing creature. They’re known as slow swimmers, but I still couldn’t keep up with her, and soon I was watching her swish that graceful tail out of sight.

But she wasn’t done with us yet. She swam past us delighted divers again and again, and we just about lost our minds at the sight and our luck. Dive master Julian went nuts with the video camera, and we were all reluctant to get out of the water when our time (and air) was up.

It had been a first-time experience for all the tourists, as well as some of the dive master trainees, and we rode the whale shark high all the way back to Ko Pangan and into the evening.

Getting comfortable with doing nothing

“Don’t worry,” I’d told Krista. “I’ll find you guys. How many ferry ports can Koh Samui have?”

Well, it turns out this not-so-little island in the Gulf of Thailand has more than a dozen ferry terminals.

It was 7:30 in the morning, and I’d spent the last 13 hours in transit via bus and ferry from Bangkok. Somewhere overhead, Krista, Brian and Dave were making their way into the area, and the plan was to meet at the ferry terminal.

Of course, we didn’t exactly have all our ducks in a row. None of us knew at which ferry ports we’d be arriving or at what time. Since there were three of them traveling together and I was traveling alone, and likely arriving before them, I assumed responsibility for finding them.

I staked out a café veranda from which I could watch two ferry terminals – nobody could tell me which of the two my friends would arrive at, but at least we’d narrowed it down. In the next four hours, I hastily ran down one pier after another thinking I’d spotted them, but it was eventually they who spotted me.

Together at last, we hopped another ferry to Koh (Island) Phangnan, a pickup-truck taxi ride across the island and then a longboat ride to the secluded Bottle Beach, protected by a little bay. Twenty-four hours after my journey began, I was housed in a little bungalow and cannon balling into the pool.

You can walk from one end of Bottle Beach to the other in about 15 minutes – if you’re strolling leisurely, which is really the only way to stroll if you’re trying to get into the island lifestyle. This little enclave supports three sets of bungalows appropriately names Beach Bottle I, Beach Bottle II and Beach Bottle III – I’m still not really sure where we’re staying, but it’s spacious, clean, has air conditioning and is running us about U.S. $35/person for five nights here, so I’m not complaining.

After the frenzy of Bangkok sightseeing, I looked around the quiet spot and knew I’d have to get used to doing nothing fast. Still, doing nothing takes some getting used to, and to ease into it, Brian and I decided to hike to the next beach town over for some provisions.

The steep, hour-long trek, turned into nearly two hours when we got lost, but we eventually found the little beach village – deserted now because it’s low season – and stocked up on some necessities, like rum, cigarettes and some local herb, which made the hike back to Bottle Beach much easier.

Then it was four more days of stretching out on the wide ribbon of white sand, paddling around in the jade sea and lounging by the pool. We mixed it up with decadent meals and games of cards and dice. It’s a rough job but someone’s gotta do it.

13 hours in a bus

As I boarded the bus, I wondered what I was thinking. I had just sentenced myself to 13 hours of ground travel.

Strapping on my anti-nausea wrist cuffs, I prayed the ride wouldn’t be too stop-and-go. I prayed the passengers wouldn’t snore. And I prayed the odors from the bus toilet wouldn’t spread.

I believe in the power of prayer. The ride was a piece of cake.

It was 7 p.m. when I boarded the VIP bus. I’d held a cautiously guarded opinion of Thai VIP, but for the $25 ticket, I was very satisfied. The wide, cushy chairs reclined to almost 90 degrees, making sleeping comfortable and easy. Blankets were provided, and there was even a bus hostess who doled out snacks and bottles of water and juice.

The television up front blared a Thai variety show, and then a laughable American thriller, but eventually fell silent around 10 p.m. At midnight, we stopped for supper, also included with the price of the ticket. It was simple Thai home cooking, reminiscent of what my own Chinese mother had put on our childhood dinner tables. Side dishes of sliced pork sausage, pan-fried bok choy, salted boiled eggs, pieces of stir-fried fish with spicy red chili peppers and pickled cabbage covered the table and were accompanied by bowls of chok – a watery rice porridge.

Half an hour later, we were back on board. Everyone hunkered down for the night, and there was silence in the bus.

At 5:30 a.m., all the lights in the bus were turned on, and the passengers blinked in groggy surprise as the bus hostess passed out little cups of instant coffee. In another half an hour, we were at the ferry terminal in Sarat Thani, the popular jumping point to the islands in the Gulf of Thailand, including my destination – Koh Samui.

I stood on the deck of the boat watching the sun rise over little islands and big rock formations lodged in the sea. I gulped large mouthfuls of fresh sea air – a welcome change from the grit and grime of Bangkok. After two wonderful weeks in the big, bustling city, I was ready for a change of pace in the form of sun-drenched beaches, swaying hammocks and fruity drinks.