May 16-17, 2009
So last weekend 12 of us took a trip to Koh Phi Phi (pronounced Co Pee Pee) which is a group of islands off the coast of Phuket. Its where they filmed the 2003 box office smash “The Beach” starring Leonardo Dicaprio. Well I don’t know when the movie was made or if it even did well in theatres but it was filmed in Koh Phi Phi. My trip was pretty much the exact same thing. Except we didn’t swim there with french backpackers, run through a marijuana field, and live in a secret, primative civilization. Our trip did include crappy hostels, good seafood, buckets of alcohol, muay thai fights, and countless pictures.
We took the 8:30am ferry from phuket town; 1000 baht for a round trip. We were greeted by free croissants and coffee and opted for the top level of the ship. Ryan, john, and ian start hitting the sang som whisky. I don’t know if that’s how you spell whiskey from thailand, but I think that’s how they spell it here because its not exactly whiskey; it tastes more like spiced rum. Just one more thing lost in translation.
Theres a lot of asian tourists on the boat (something I usually see in NYC but to see asian tourists in asia is something new) along with some aussie girl on holiday with her mum, a trendy brit couple with matching sunglasses, and these 3 girls sitting to the side of us speaking a language that we cant quite seem to figure out.
Nevermind the 3 brazilian, portuguese, or french girls, the mountains of Koh Phi Phi are coming into view. The captain says that we will sail around koh phi phi leh (where the beach “the beach” was actually filmed) and we will arrive at Koh phi phi don shortly after. The two main island of KPP are KPP leh and KPP don, don is the bigger attraction and where we stayed. Theres also other islands such as mosquito island which we, and as appealing as it sounds, did not get a chance to visit. We opted for more friendly places such as Monkey Beach.
As we leave the boat, like anywhere else in thailand, we start getting hounded by people trying to stay at their bungalos for “very good price” or take their “boat boats” to maya beach. Typical thailand, we say “no thank you” but its getting so old in thailand that we just start ignoring them. That wont stop them from asking you a second time 30 seconds later when you turn around and walk back the same way you just came from.
We don’t want any bungalos or boats, were just looking for a place to put our stuff and for cheap. “I have room, 400 baht, good price”. “Where you stay tonight my friend?”. “Bungalo, cheap for you”. The offers fall on deaf ears and start to ellicit a “get the hell away from me” rather than a “sure, im your friend, ill stay at your place” response. We know that the farther we go from the port, the cheaper the place will be. We start walking along the grey brick streets with no shortage of stray cats and whatdya know, more people asking us to buy stuff. The place is a maze but we just keep walking in what we think is away from the port. We pass some construction site, were on the right track to the crappy part of KPP.
Some guy comes up to the 12 of us with backpacks on saying that he has a room for 150 baht. That’s about $5 for the night. We jump on the offer and think the hostel is right there. But we start walking up some shoddy concrete steps on the hillside. The views nice but I can start to see why the room is so cheap. We get to a room with about 10 bunk beds in a room. Euro backpackers are still passed out in bed and theres some walking around. We get shown another room with 4 beds and 1 fan. This suits me much better, we can lock it and I would know the other people in te room with me so my camera wouldn’t get stolen. The random guy that might not even work there takes our 150, gives us our sheets and pillow cases. These sheets were pretty necessary because the rock hard mattresses had some questionable stains on them. This is traveling; finding the shittiest place to stay without all the luxury, meeting people from around the world who are doing the same thing we are. Maybe not teaching but seeing the world while theyre young. So right there is a comparable stat to “The Beach”. Leo stays at a crappy hostel where he meets some weird brit who gives him a map to the beach. “The Beach” similarity #1.
So our stuffs dropped off,, lets go find some food and some activities. We just want to go cliff jumping, KPP has some pretty reputable cliff jumps. We find a place that will take 4 of us for 600baht a piece. Ryan is not well trained in the art of haggling and out of excitement, he says “hell yea, sure we’ll take it!”. John and I shake our heads and just think that ryans stupidity cost us a few extra drinks at the bar tonight. Luckily john intervened and got them down to 560, great so 1 extra drink at the bar.
With our receipts in our pockets and a 2 oclock long boat departure time, we go tend to our second priority; eating. When on an island you have to be stupid not to try the seafood. We found a neat place on the beach. John of course got the spiciest dish he could find that of course wasn’t spicy enough for him. Come to think of it, I got the chicken with ginger and onions with noodles. I knew I had to try the seafood later then. I do love onions and ginger though. It was good, but you can still call me stupid.
I grabbed a 10L dry bag so I could take my camera on our cliff jumping trip. This trip exemplifies the reason I got this camera. The scenery of an island chain in thailand and a trip with my friends is exactly what I would like to shoot.
2 oclock rolls around and we head back down to the shop where we booked our excursion. The two ladies at the desk show us what seems to be a random thai guy but who happens to be our “guide” for the day. We weave through the streets to his shop to get fitted for flippers and shoes and gloves. The shoes and gloves were pretty key because the rocks to climb up the cliffs were very jagged. On the way to the longboat my green havaianas break. I love those sandals and I cant believe I had to get new ones. I only buy green flip flops and the only green ones they had on the island were this dark forest green havaians which I had to opt for.
The longboat is a classic thai boat. Its iconic to thailand and KPP with its colorful fabrics wrapped around the bow of the boat. Ours had red, white and blue around the bow and some flowers; easy to remember. So we pass a huge limestone cliff face that slants up from water level. We saw some people jump off the low part as we pulled into port on the ferry. We said to ourselves, that’s not too high, we wanna do higher. Luckily we did get to go higher, but we had to take it in steps first. He showed us how to climb up to where we would jump off, this is where the shoes and gloves come into play. If you made a bad step or your hand slipped, you would most probably die. Theres jagged rocks sticking up everywhere that you have to jump or climb over. Climbing up and making sure not to slip was definitely more nerve racking than jumping off a cliff.
First jump comes up, 10m, ryan front flips it. John goes. Ian goes. I do a backflip. Tim goes. Easy enough, nothing new to us really but still fun and a good warm up. A 12m jump is up next. We jump off pretty easily. John leans to the right and enters into the water kind of funny. Tim makes this funny noise as he jumps. It wasn’t an “AAHHHHH” im jumping off a cliff kind of yell, but a long, high pitched “oooooo”. Not an “Ohhh” but a sound that only Tim could replicate. The next height is 15m, about the size of the cliffs back home at Mamanasco. Those cliffs were fun as hell back in high school. These cliffs are a bit different. We’re not jumping into 6ft of murky CT pond water but rather 30ft of crystal clear, pacific blue, thailand water. We do this jump twice so that our guide can make sure we have enough body control to do the big jump. John still enters the water a bit sideways. Tim does his funny sound again. But for the most part we all have it down. The big jump is the next and final one.
(the cliff jump. start low on the left then last jump was from about the middle of the picture)
Climbing up seemed different this time. This time I thought I had a better chance of me dying from the jump than navigating around the spear like limestone formations. We were all nervously laughing as we climb higher. The phrase “oh shit” was common out of everyones mouth. We didn’t even know where we were jumping from, we just kept following our guide. He points to a small ledge that we have to climb a few feet down to and then stand on to jump off. We didn’t know who was going first. Ian mustered up some courage and volunteered to be the guinea pig for this. He leaps off and we peer off the edge to see him flailing around in the air. He quickly tucks in his arms and legs and pencil dives in; a clean entry. Next is Ryan still muttering some swear words. He quickly disappears from the edge and 4 seconds later I hear a splash. I hear him say something when he resurfaces, so at least I know now he’s not dead. Tim and I are arguing of who should go last. It wasn’t a matter of whose going next, but who has to be the last to go. He reluctantly said he would go last and I stepped down to the ledge. No way I can back down now. How many chances do I get to go cliff jumping in my life? And in thailand? Plus my friends wouldn’t let me live it down ever. I try not to think about it because then I just become more nervous. OK, I have a good stance, my shoes wont slip, and I go. My arms wave around in huge circles. I have quite a bit of time for some thoughts to run through my head. “oh shit” of course was my initial one and “hey I feel like I shouldve hit the water by now” was the second. As the thought passed, I tucked in my arms and hit the water. Not the cleanest of entries; my legs were a bit open and bent. The impact of the water on my feet was immense. That kind of impact could give someone with flat feet a high arch if they werent wearing shoes. I wipe my eyes from the sea water with my gloves on and look back up to the cliff I just jumped from. I can see Tim up there who, for a tall man, looks real small from down below. John and Ryan get their cameras ready for Tim’s leap. We hope to catch a classic Tim noise in the 4 second free fall on camera but to no avail. Watching him jump from in the water was a great sight. It’s a totally different view from sea level, 20m below the take off point.
The guide has us do one more jump. This time all of us at the same time off the smaller ledge. This made for some great footage. We made sure to jump out and away from eachother so we wouldn’t hit anyone. We count to 3 and we all jump. Ryan jumps right next to me and it just looks like hes diving in my left peripheral. He tucks in and pulls off the front flip though. John is a little too close in my right peripheral. He jumps a second before me and I hit him when I enter the water, nothing big, just a little bump. Some high fives are exchanged while wading in the water. We feel pretty good about ourselves and criticize the group that came to jump after us. The guys wont even go to the 15m height and as for the girls, one girl was too scared so she had to climb back down. To me, that’s scarrier than jumping off 10m.
Next up is snorkeling around the jump site. We do a loop around a limestone mass and see some coral, some fish. Standard snorkeling stuff. Ryan and John are diving deep down. I cant hold my breath that long and my I cant equalize the pressure in my ears. On the other side of the limestone mass, we can see KPP Leh from sea level. “The Beach” similarity #2. Here Leo is swimming to the beach and the view we saw is the shot they used in the movie. The waves are picking up and our longboat is drifting away from us. We eventually get there, struggle to use the ladder and get in. Next stop is monkey beach.
Monkey and trash beach it should be called. Obviously a bunch of litter has washed up ashore which took away from some of the aesthetic beauty of a beach filled with wild monkeys. Our guide has some cut pineapple and watermelon for us to eat and to feed the monkeys. They come right up to you and take the fruit from your hand. I focus more on documenting the feeding than actually feeding them myself. I tend to focus more on using my camera than taking part of the things that im caputring on film. This is fine, I like to document our travels. Id feel worse if I didn’t capture some photogenic moment and I regreted it. Luckily john has a waterproof camera that hes been snapping photos and videos with. Im still waiting for those to be posted. Anyway, about 20 pictures and some video clips, we head back to port.
Back at the shop our guide hooks up his video camera to a TV and we see our video. The jumps look great and were all smiles. We need this tape. We all pitch in for the 1800 baht tape. We plan to copy it or post it online so we all get to watch it and show it to our friends and family. So far no copies, we’ll get on it later.
We head back to The Rock. That’s the name of our hostel. Im surprised the place even has a name. Showers are actually a pleasant releif from our busy day. They arent very clean but they get the job done I guess. Alright, showered, changed, started sweating already. Good, lets go out. We meet up with the other girls who didn’t have the stomach to stay at our hostel. Turns out they payed less than us and they have their own bathroom and AC. Well at least we have an experience. They had to share 3 to a bed though. We pick up some big Changs, drink them and start walking. Where to eat, where to eat? I don’t recall exactly where we eat, but I think I had sea food this time, mission accomplished. We are being handed flyers for different bars and drink specials. We are quite keen to free buckets at 8:30 and we head over to Apache bar after deserting the desrted Hippies bar. Apache isnt very crowded, just us american alcholics in for some free alcohol. Something about the novelty of drinking out of a bucket at a beach is quite appealing. It was the novelty because it sure as hell wasn’t the alcohol, I don’t know what was in it, but I think it was mostly Sprite. I guess they cant lose too much money from us. The lighting is very interesting and I take the chance to snap some photos. The pattern the lights were drawing on the dance floor was quite interesting so I walk up to the balcony to take a picture of it. some long exposure and light paths on my camera later I go back down to the bar. Kerry says “whos the creeper on the balcony taking pictures of the bar? Then I realized it was you”. Haha, I coudlnt pass up a good photo op.
Apache was getting lame. It wasn’t crowded and I started wishing that my buckets would be filled with sand instead of this mystery sprite mixture. Lets wander around. We find a loud bar on the corner near to the irish pub and our hostel. Theres a muay thai fight going on. Ive always wanted to see one of these live, and it’s a bar… perfect. Its me, ryan, john, tim, and jen. And emmy appears out of nowhere saying shes going to fight. What? Yea apparently you get a free bucket if you volunteer to fight in the ring. Either against a random other volunteer or a friend. Emmy gets up there and has to fight this thai girl who obviously trains. She has no padding on whereas emmy has shin guards and a padded helmet. Maybe it was the extra padding that gave her some confidence but she started kicking some ass. The thai girl was on the retreat most of the match. Not the most fundamentally sound fight ive seen but it was pretty good for a girl fight. She obviously won the fight by judges decision…. Well the audience’s decision but the ring master lifted both their hands up as to signal a tie (or a thai? Haha… nevermind). Emmy looked upset, but I guess it was a “everyone wins yay!” kind of thai boxing match. Or maybe because they were girls.
This seems like a great experience. Itd be great to say “hey I got up and thai boxed in the middle of a bar in a ring in thailand”. Ive been meaning to make the most of every opportunity and this is something I wanted to do but I was still hesitant. I ran the idea by Tim and he kinda wanted to do it. I didn’t really wanna get beat up, hes much taller plus I wanted to protect the money maker. I mean, I just got punched in the nose 2 weeks earlier and I don’t think it was completely healed. Or maybe that was just my excuse to not fight but I still wanted to get up there, I regret not doing it. we walk over to john and ryan and say hey we should all do this. Ryan is already drunk and doesn’t want to get up and fight. John pounces on the opportunity and says “yea lets do it”. So john and tim are fighting, ryan doesn’t want to fight, and I, once again, am the photographer on the sideline. That’s fine because I got some good footage.
Round 1… FIGHT. So they come out slow, not really throwing punches. Afterall theyre buddies and no one has thai boxed before. They both try to throw the occasional kick in just because its allowed but none really land. John goes to dodge around and gets met by Tim’s right hook. Right in the nose, and john starts bleeding a bit. Round 1 over. Tim and john have a little meeting in the ring saying OK, lets take it a bit easier. I don’t think either are in too good of shape and john just started bleeding. So round 2….FIGHT. or kinda fight, but just throw some body shots and the occassional light head shot. Round 2 over, and less spectacular. A brit sitting on johns side just says “oi mate, stop fighting like a #&#%@ and fight”. John takes this as some disrespect so with a thumb of his glove shuts one nostril and blows a wad of blood towards him. The blood lands on the outskirts of the ring by my feet. That wont get cleaned up anytime soon. John turns away and the drunk brit goes to me, “ey that’s a sign of disrespect”. Not wanting to start any trouble in a thai boxing bar, I just turn around and start taking pictures again. The brit comes up to him and simply says he wasn’t talking any trash, he just thinks that john is bigger and should be controling the fight more. John takes his advice and round 3 he comes out swinging. The ring master stops the fight occassionally to dab the blood away from johns nose. Tim starts to protect his head more seeing that john is looking to draw some blood from him. He doesn’t want to be the only one bleeding from this match. Finally john connects with Tims face and gives him a bloody nose. Now the ring master has to stop the fight to dab blood away from both their faces. At least theres some hygenic practices going on here. A few more minutes pass and that’s it, the fights over. From the blue corner, with a bloody nose, and his hand lifted in the air, John is the winner. Both put up a good fight but it was his aggressiveness in the 3rd round that made him win.
Ok now take off the sweaty pads and leave them in the ring so they wont be cleaned and the next participant can bathe in your sweat. Oh, and you didn’t wear underwear under the boxing shorts. Congrats you now have ringworm from the pads and some communicable disease from the thai boxing shorts that get passed around more at a bar than one of those thai hookers. Good job, go get your bucket of alcohol. Walking back to where ryan and jen are, we find our previous champ emmy puking. Her eyes are half open, face is flushed and she is a bit disoriented. Drinking and fighting may seem pretty common but it is dehyrdrating. She was doing fine before, now shes puking under the table at the bar. Emmy, you need to go home.
Not much else happens for the rest of the night. At the irish pub, on a camera hand off between john-o and ryan, ryans camera fell to the ground. It fell on the opened lens and now the lens wont retract. The camera wont even turn on properly. Luckily the SD card can be salvaged. And at least Ryan has a better camera with him, although he rarely takes it out. Time to eat those problems away to some late night drunk food. Back home the late night drunk food consists of pizza or whatever the hell you have in your fridge. In Koh Phi Phi street vendors are your one and only source for a late night snack. Chicken legs, and mystery meat balls on skewers. That’s pretty standard around Phuket too, everythings on skewers, sometimes you might find the chicken legs on the skewers. I get a chicken leg and john gets an assortment of skewers, one of which I think has liver on it. No thanks, between that and the place I have to sleep tonight, I think id throw up.
So with the leg of a chicken that was probably roaming the filthy streets of Koh Phi Phi an hour ago in my stomach, I head back to The Rock. Tim’s already sleeping because he has to get up early to go rock climbing with Kate. We try to be silent but we feel the need to complain on how hot and disgusting the room is. Tims is asleep no longer. I don’t take my shirt off to cool down, but leave it on because I want to keep as little skin as possible coming in contact with the beds.
I wake up around 9am in a sweat and cant go back to bed. I roam the empty streets of KPP because I don’t want to go back to my hostel. Fast forward to when everyone awakes. People are hungover, no surprise there. Usually when youre hungover the last thing you want to do is drink, but “the hair of the dog”. I’m not quite sure how the rest of that saying goes, but I guess it helps. So its blazing hot, big backpacks on our backs, and they’re going drinking. Trusty ole sang som will do the trick. We all set up shop under a canopy by a beach. We don’t feel like shopping or walking. We wonder what we could possibly do on KPP if we stayed another day, we feel like weve exhausted everything. Or we just felt exhausted. That Sunday was a pretty mellow day, I took pictures, they drank in a lagoon by a jungle. “Holy shit, were in a lagoon. Is that the jungle over there? This is paradise!”. Yes it is john, yes it is. Except I don’t think it’s a lagoon if its attached to the ocean but im not gonna rain on your parade.
We need to get back to Phuket. All aboard the drunk boat. Or, drunks, all aboard the boat. I fell asleep on the boat but the others, still drunk from before were having a good time. However I don’t think the european tourists around them were sharing in their blissful joy. I think they understood that they were in paradise and didn’t need to hear you say it over and over again. And I think drunk loud americans, as we most often are, ruin the paradise. Its like litter at the beach. Its like ants at a picnic. Its like…americans in thailand. But I’m not bashing my friends, its just that I don’t think the old european travellers enjoy trips like we do.
Everyones tired after the trip. John and Ryan pass out in the bus home from a combination of lack of sleep and daytime drinking. We have a nice dinner at the hotel with the same people we just went on a weekend trip with. That was the limit, I think another meal after that with all of us together might be trouble; we might start hating each other. But it was good to see some of our peers around the hotel that we didn’t see all weekend. And it was good to see that my roommate bill was alive. He had been feeling ill before after some bad dairy. He would have trouble going to class or coming out with us at night. Its not so bad if you cant go to class, but if you cant come out with us, you k now its bad. On the trip we started speculating that it was Swine Flu. What if we come back and on the news read “American Brings Swine Flu to Thailand”. Well good thing it wasn’t, and he was back to normal, smokin a pack a day.
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