EastforEaster: Day 5 – Phi Phi Islands

Click here for Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

Harvest house served a decent breakfast as part of the deal, and we waited for the pickup. We also got ourselves a Krabi + surrounding areas set of maps from the hotel. We’d arranged our Krabi tours through Patty, who was extremely helpful on mail and whose execution was flawless. The pickup arrived on time, and stopped at a couple of other hotels to pick up other passengers before arriving at the Nopparat Thara ferry and depositing us near the toilet. Yes, unfortunately that was the standard meeting point. :O

We’d chosen a speedboat option for Phi Phi and set out from the pier at close to 9. After about 45 minutes, the first stop was Bamboo Island. The schedule then underwent a rejig and lunched at Maya Bay after we had visited Phi Pi Don and the Viking Cave.

Maya Bay made quite a pretty picture and the ‘buffet meal’ (about 6 items with a drastic cut if you’re vegetarian) probably felt tastier thanks to all the snorkeling that happened before we got there.

We halted there for close to 2 hours and then made our way to Monkey Bay for more snorkeling. There aren’t many corals to look at, but the fishes were pretty decent. Meanwhile, unless you’re terribly icky if you get wet by salt water or are extra fashion conscious, just wear your swimming trunks, take off the tee and jump in. We had brought an extra set of clothes, but it proved unnecessary.

We got back by about 3.30 and after some back and forth got ourselves a taxi to take us to Krabi town. That set us back by 1000 baht. Now, if you have time, a bus would be much cheaper and if you get delayed on the way back, you could still catch a tuk tuk or even a taxi, and still make some savings. It takes close to half an hour to get to the town, and we started at 5.30. Krabi’s market is more active on weekends, so we could only see a small sample, but the food did seem exciting. I only held back because I was hoping for an awesome dinner.

We then walked to the Vogue department store which proved to be a happy hunting  ground for bargaining, brands included. We had arranged for our cab driver to meet us nearby and take us to Ruen Mai. This restaurant provided one of the best meals during the trip. Our earlier research as well as the flight magazine had pointed to this as a great place and it didn’t disappoint. We tried our favourite Tom Kha Kai, Pad Ped – chicken, Choo Chi Pla (fish) and a pork fried rice. They also had this strange flavoured iced tea which got better as the ice melted. In a  show of high spirits, helped by Chang, we asked for everything to be spicy. A fantastic meal, but which also saw us hanging our tongues out of the taxi like dogs, because cool air could do wonders to a tormented tongue!!

We got back to Ao Nang and asked to be dropped off near the beach. Thanks to the dinner being well below the planned budget, decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream and some shopping 😉 Haagen Dazs would’ve cost us as much as the dinner, so we decided to try out Dream Cones. Presented with many options, we finally chose the Chocolate Brownie and the Chocolate Banana waffle cones. Both were awesome. On the way back to the hotel, we clicked the Krabi version of the tuk tuk and another Bangkok style one on sale!

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