Tag Archives: snorkeling

SE Asia

Phi Phi, Maya bay and the speedboat adventure

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phiphi7

I believe that most of the people have seen the famous movie “The Beach” with Leonardo Dicaprio starring in it. Well, a lot of time has past since then and the paradise is not quite as it used to be…

Today has been a long day. Since we are already in Phuket and Phi Phi is yet another of the must visits around here we decided to get on a tour to have a look for ourselves. After a long research online we decided to take a one day speedboat excursion. There are also ferries going to Phi Phi from Phuket and different accommodations available on the island but this time we chose not to use these options. Something for the future also :).

But there are a huge numbers of different speedboat cruises available, we chose this one because it had the most to offer compared to the price and at the end of the day we were quite satisfied. But boy was it tiring.  It was our first experience with the speedboat and of course we just had to go to the front of the ship at the beginning when the longest 1 hour ride was waiting us. Let just put it this way – you better have strong back muscles and an iron spine because some of the jumps just made you fly off the seat while a moment later you’d be coming down with a huge bang! Luckily my feet touched the ground so I could use my legs as shock absorbers. In addition I was sitting one one place where I constantly got soaked by the waves hitting the boat and splashing to my face. All that besides it was actually pretty fun but nevertheless the rest of the journey we traveled inside at the back of the boat where it was much calmer.

But now coming to the Maya bay – the location where the movie was filmed (partly at least). Since I’ve thoroughly looked it up before it came as no surprise that the whole bay was filled with different boats and tourists. But still, it was really crazy. Every moment one boat left and another one came. And there was tens and tens of these. But the location itself was of course magnificent. Beautiful white sand, crystal clear water and high cliffs surrounding you in almost every direction. If you could shut yourself off from all the crowds and just breath in the nature it felt really great. There’s an option to enjoy the bay in much more secluded way also. For 3500-4000 baht one company arranges special tours where after the tourist hours you can stay on the beach with only 20-25 people, swim with fluorescent plankton and spend the night right there on the boat. You can read more about it from here.

We also went snorkeling near the bay (which was pretty good actually but I suspect that they were feeding the fish in order the’d come there amongst the crowds 🙂 ), visited several sightseeing places like the Viking cave, Monkey beach and so on. On Phi Phi Don (the largest, only inhabited island) we had our lunch and just looked around for some time. And lastly we visited Koh Khai Nok, which is a beautiful but still tourist filled small patch of paradise near Phuket. We woke up at 6.30 on the morning at got back at 6 in the evening so yet another day full of adventures!

By the way after an hour or two coming off the boat the world still went like:

 

Until the next post :)!

Lauri

SE Asia

Discovering a whole new world!

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For the past 2 days you could have found us mostly with our bottoms towards the sky :). Which means that we have been discovering all the secrets the sea has to offer. There’s a local second-hand shop right near our place so we went and bought 2 sets of snorkeling gear for 400 baht (10€). Usually near the beaches here you can find them with 800 baht a piece so we were extremely happy with our find! Especially since we will have a lot of coral and fish exploration options coming up at Langkawi and Bali also :).

I had been snorkeling only once in my life before. And there was not much to see, especially compared with Phuket. Of course sadly a lot of damage has been done to the sea life around here and all over the world. I can only imagine what I’d would have been 50 years back for example. But it’s still a very very magical world that quite often just slips our attention. Back home we have actually 13 fish in 2 separate aquariums (otherwise the bigger ones would just eat the smaller ones 🙂 ) so we really enjoy watching them.

So far we’ve only discovered this world at our local Ao Sane and Yanui beaches (which I wrote about a while back) but we will definitely go and explore in some other places on and around Phuket also.

But I’m keeping this post short since it’s quite difficult to describe this with words. It’s much better to have a look for yourself :)! Here’s the next video about the underwater world of Phuket and our adventures at Monkey Hill.

PS. If you’re planning a similar trip like ours or you just want to capture different pieces of you’re life in whatever imaginable circumstances then in my opinion GoPro or something similar is a must :)!