Despite going to bed at somewhere around 4am, I got myself up at 7:30 am and gathered up my camera and headed to the view point. I wasn’t sure exactly where to go but there were signs pointing the way so it wasn’t hard to figure out.
At the end of the normal street, there was a set of stairs that went straight up, and I couldn’t even see where they ended. I started to climb. Up and up and up I went, the odd slight curve in the stairs but for the most part straight up the side of the hill/mountain. Eventually I got to a look out point with a couple of benches to rest on. I was the only one there so I snapped a few photos and saw a couple signs pointing to “Lookout 1” and “Lookout 2” so I started to follow them. Instead of stairs this time, it was a paved path that was on a 40 degree angle that I had to go up. Up up up some more I went, glad that I decided to do this trek in the early morning and not at high noon, since it was already feeling like it was over 30 degrees.
After about 20 minutes of hiking I reached the top of the hill, where a little guesthouse and restaurant was located. There was an outcropping of rocks so I climbed up on them and took a seat to enjoy the view. There was a man, who evidently worked at the guesthouse, outside sweeping and tidying up around the establishment. He asked me where I was from and I told him Canada – to which he replied there sure seemed to be a lot of us on Koh Phi Phi. I agreed, thinking of the massive group we were with the day before. He told me that there had been a massive storm in the morning, around 5 am, when the sun was coming up. However, since the sun had come up behind the storm, there had been a fantastic rainbow that was visible from the view point. I told him I was really sad to have missed such a sight.
I spent about 20 minutes just sitting and staring out over the island. One the left hand side was the port, where we’d arrived into. There were boats docked out in the harbour area, and boats all along the shore. On the right side was the bay that all the bars were located along, where we had spent the first night partying and swimming. The actual town was situated on a very small sand bar between the two bays, and on either side of the sand bar were massive hills like the one I had climbed to catch this fantastic view.
I started back down the hill, deciding to maybe go swim in the water before we left the island that afternoon. When I got back down to the lower view point to where the stairs began I started to count each step, curious to know exactly how many steps I had climbed to get up here (not to mention the paved portion of the path up to the official view point). I must have looked kinda crazy, counting as I went down but considering I was the only person on the path at 8:30 in the morning I wasn’t too worried about it.
Eventually I reached the bottom.... 325 steps later. It seemed completely ridiculous that I had just climbed up that many stairs. But, as I said before, it was completely worth it.
I wandered to the beach, and walked along with my feel in the water. There were a lot of jelly fish, however, so I ended up not swimming after all. I sat down, tried to take as many mental pictures as possible and just enjoyed the moment before heading back to the hotel to get the boys up and moving.
I thought maybe when I got back to the room the guys would be up and moving, but I was wrong. I’d left the key behind, in case they needed it, so I wasn’t able to get in. I banged on the door and was surprised to see the room still dark and both boys still laying in bed barely functioning. I told them I’d be back in a bit, and left to go hang out near the cafe with the internet.
After about half an hour I went back to the hotel and started to get the boys moving. We decided to find some food and then come back and check out officially. We made our way over to the fruit shake stand that we had gone to the day before and ordered up some drinks. I had already had one that morning, when I had gone to check out the internet, but for the equivalent of $1.10 I really couldn’t pass up the chance to have another.
While drinking our drinks we saw the guys we’d been hanging out with and asked what their plans were. The guys from Edmonton were heading to Koh Tao, and the German was thinking of heading back to Phuket, so asked if he could join us. We said no problem.
Because we had to be at the airport at noon the next day to catch our flight to Bangkok, our only option was to head back to the main land that afternoon, since the ferry likely wouldn’t give us enough time to get back in order to catch our flight. Unhappy with Patong Beach, we opted to spend the night in Phuket Town, tagging along with some other Germans that the guys had met while they were out without me. They already had a room booked at the On On hotel, the hotel that was used in the filming of The Beach.
This was quickly turning into a Leonardo DiCaprio vacation – first we watched Titantic on the flat screen at the beach bar, we visited Maya Bay, and now we were going to sleep where they filmed the hostel scenes of the movie.
We went back to the hotel and packed up our stuff, left it to pick up later and went to book our ferry tickets back to Phuket. We had about an hour to kill before having to be at the port so we opted to just hang out and do a bit of shopping at the little stalls before heading to the pier.
The sky had started to cloud over since my walk up to the view point that morning, and it looked like it might start to rain. We’d been extremely lucky so far while on Koh Phi Phi, with the only rain happening while we were sleeping (or should have been sleeping). The wind had also picked up, which was sort of nice as it helped with the feeling incredibly sticky from all the humidity.
We took off for the pier, said our goodbyes to the guys from Edmonton, and climbed aboard the ferry. There weren’t a lot of people on the boat so we each took our own seats and tried to make ourselves comfortable.
Unfortunately the wind that was so nice on the shore was creating some pretty serious waves on the water. The boat bounced up and down, sometimes pretty harshly. Somehow I managed to sleep most of the way, despite the fact that my head was hitting against the window of the ferry off and on. Some people on the boat weren’t so lucky though, and were throwing up off the back of the boat. Eric made sure to tell us that even the baby behind him was throwing up.
Sawasdee,ka.
ReplyDeleteI come to visit you blog naka. ^-^