{"id":731,"date":"2023-10-21T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sarahanderictraveltheworld.wordpress.com\/?p=731"},"modified":"2024-12-09T03:48:20","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T03:48:20","slug":"the-beach-phi-phi-island-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahanderictraveltheworld.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/21\/the-beach-phi-phi-island-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"THE BEACH – Phi Phi Island Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Activity level: \ud83c\udf36\ufe0f\ud83c\udf36\ufe0f\ud83c\udf36\ufe0f\ud83c\udf36\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modes of transportation: \ud83d\ude97\ud83d\udc5f\u26f4\ufe0f\ud83d\udee5\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night before, it monsooned. Normally, rain is soothing, but in this case, it was actually kind of too loud. We were pretty tired, so we fell asleep anyway\u2014that is, until we were awoken by a couple fighting next door at 4:30 in the morning (never figured out what about). Luckily, we brought earplugs, so we popped those in and fell back asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our tour left at 8:00, so we had to be packed up and ready to leave at 7:30. We weren\u2019t. But we did check out of our hotel, drop our bags, and make it to our pickup point by 7:58. The tour didn\u2019t leave until 8:20 anyway, and we weren\u2019t even close to the last people to arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first stop on the tour was Maya Bay, a national park and beach made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio cult classic, \u201cThe Beach.\u201d We happened to hit a nice lull in the crowds, so we saw the beach relatively empty (by the time we left, it was packed). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Great views! And the rocks aren\u2019t bad either.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The beach sits in a calm cove with striking, jagged cliffs all around. It\u2019s gorgeous and picturesque. We also enjoyed watching all the people obviously posing for Instagram (us included). We had about an hour there to sit and enjoy the sights before our boat left, so we sat for a little and just took it in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next, we went to Poh Le, a snorkeling and scuba spot nearby with fairly shallow reefs. We had a little time to snorkel, and saw beautiful reefs that were surprisingly vibrant (considering the instructions were hard to understand, and people kept stepping on the reefs). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The water was crystal blue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were hoards of sea urchins, so they warned us not to stand up, but a couple people on our tour definitely got stung. We even saw an albino one (or maybe it was dead. Not sure. It was definitely white though). By the end, our foreheads were hurting a little because the snorkel gear didn\u2019t quite fit right, but we had seen most of what was there anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We didn\u2019t get any photos under the water, we were surrounded by many colorful fish and coral.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After that, we went to a deep cove where we could swim. The water was deep deep blue, and we got to do some tricks off the front of the boat. We were having a good time swimming, when Sarah gave out a little yelp. She thought Eric was messing with her, but she looked over and he was 8 feet away. Seemingly, she got bit by something (there was no mark so it couldn\u2019t have been too big) so we all pretty much got out of the water (it was time to go anyway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cliff sides were jagged\u2014Sarah wishes we hand a real camera with us to capture the detail.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We puttered around past some caves before heading to \u201cmonkey beach.\u201d We thought it would be sort of lame, but honestly, it was insane. There were about a dozen monkeys that came right up to people. We probably shouldn\u2019t have been surprised, since people feed them all kinds of fruit\u2014but they seemed pretty chill. They mostly just came to grab food, except for with this one guy, who they constantly attacked (he didn\u2019t even do anything). So that was funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The monkeys were very tame, except to this guy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n