Random Ramblings from Koh Phi Phi

January 7, 2011

Senne's Summary: It’s really quite hard to summarize random ramblings… so you should read the whole thing… here’s a one word summary from each section: gym, beach, signs, cats, Rocky, bike, cart and cooking. (See you should read the whole thing!)

A photo from one of our morning walks. This is the side where the ferry comes in.

Steve has been very excited this week because our hotel has an excellent Fitness Center and he has been able to work out in a real gym!

We found the most incredible beach on our second day. The sand is beautiful and white and the water is the most stunning turquoise colour. We rented a couple of beach chairs and an umbrella (only 100 Baht each, about $3) and then we spent a lovely relaxing day at the beach reading, relaxing and hanging out in the warm turquoise water.

The Handsome Man at the beach in Phi Phi

A few hours after we arrived the tide started going out (not really fast…don’t worry!) and part of the area that had been underwater became these giant sandbars. We were both surprised at how far out the tide went.

We’ve returned to the beach a few times. Steve is particularly fond of the beach because there is plenty of eye candy for him to admire. He goes for lots of walks up and down the beach and then reports back 😉

Lunch at a restaurant on the beach.

Side note to Italian beaches in general:  you should be ashamed of yourselves for charging 30 Euros for two beach chairs and an umbrella on far inferior beaches… end of side note.

We’ve seen some interesting signs on our walks through town. I’ve taken photos of my two favourites.

One of these signs was advertising a buffet in a restaurant. Apparently, you pay a different price for your buffet depending on if you are a man, woman, ladyboy or child…. Interesting… I wonder what would happen if you tried to price things that way in North America?

My second favourite sign said, "We will massage you with our lips—150 Baht". Seriously! It took me about 30 seconds to process this message and figure out what they were talking about. They were advertising their fish spa… you put your feet in a tank of these little fish and they clean your feet. Apparently it’s very good for you. Neither of us are interested in paying to stick our feet in a pool of fish, so we haven’t tried it out!

Ko Phi Phi has a lot of cats wandering around. The people who live here must feed them, because they all look pretty healthy to me! One afternoon when we were eating at a restaurant by the beach, a teeny little kitten took a liking to Steve. She decided to come up and use him as a windbreak and take a nap on his chair. Once our food arrived she woke up and began the process of looking as cute as possible so we would feed her… you know it worked. We did manage to get some very cute pictures of her. 😸

We also celebrated Rocky’s birthday on Jan.3. He would have been 20. (For those of you who don’t know who Rocky is, he was our dog 🐶 ). Anyway, we were going to celebrate with some cake (to commemorate the birthday where he ate an entire piece of cake in one bite)… but couldn’t really see any we wanted so we settled on ice cream (Rocky always got the last few licks of the ice cream on a stick!) Now, I know you’re thinking we were just looking for another excuse to eat ice cream… but we weren’t!

There are no motorized vehicles on Ko Phi Phi…okay there ARE two mopeds we’ve seen… one belongs to the police and the other one picks up the garbage. Anyway, most people who live here get around by bicycle.

Getting a ride to school

The funniest thing is when they are trying to weave through the tourists on these narrow streets. Some of them don’t have bells or horns so you often hear people come up behind you calling, “BEEP, BEEP!” or in one lady’s case, “Ring, Ring!”

You may be wondering how lazy tourists get their large suitcases to their hotel if there are no motorized vehicles. In Phi Phi they have these big metal carts that they push around to hold suitcases or supplies that they are moving around the island. (We took a picture so you could see them).

One evening we took a Thai cooking class. It was a bit expensive so we just took the “mini” course where you get to pick two dishes to cook. We chose to do the noodle soup and the pad thai because those are the two dishes we eat the most. The dishes were surprisingly easy to make. So easy that I am confident that I could actually cook them on my own!!! Steve loves the noodle soup and I love the pad thai.

I think I’ve had it almost every day since we arrived in Thailand! It was a bonus that we got to keep the cookbook with more Thai recipes so we can try some of those out as well when we get home. Any volunteers to taste our Thai cooking when we return??? The funniest part of the class was that the dishes were really easy to make, but every time we finished one the Thai guy who was teaching us would clap his hands and say, “You’re done! YAAAAAAAAY!”

And I think that's enough random ramblings for now!