Tuesday 25 February 2014

Thailand Travels: Day 26, Pee Pee Viewpoint & Bob's Booze Cruise



Waking up in my treehouse was as exciting as the day I arrived. This time the sun was beaming through the french doors and I could see the whole of the bay in all it's glory. The tide was now in, and the sea resembled a spilled paint pot, with turquoise blue shades running into a vibrant sky blue ones. It was serious postcard material and felt like the perfect time to write the stack of postcards I'd bought last night.



After that it was time for breakfast and there were 3 options: full American/English, scrambled eggs on toast or beans on toast. I went for full English, but unfortunately it was cold. Also like everywhere I've eaten in Thailand, the bread and butter tasted sweet and like it had sugar in it. Weirdly they also brought jam to have with the full English! The breakfast area was stunning though, looking out over the bay with parasols to shade you from the intense morning heat.

Yesterday I signed up for Bob's Booze Cruise, a recommendation from a guy from my full moon hostel. The cruise due to start at 1pm which meant I had the morning to myself. I decided that I wanted to try find Pee Pee viewpoint, which I didn't know at the time... was a very long uphill trek with lots of steps. Using the map, I found Phi Phi viewpoint 1 which is the first viewpoint. It was pretty blinding, but I knew that the next level would be even more spectacular.



On my way up I started chatting to three very hungover English guys, it was funny because they were obviously struggling a lot more as a result of the hangover and one guy even gave up just 10 minutes before the second summit point!

Despite dripping with sweat and struggling to gasp air in, I didn't give up and I made it to the top! Unfortunately I only had about 10 minutes to appreciate the view before I realised I had to make my decent back to the pier to meet for the booze cruise. Coming down was obviously a lot easier and 20 minutes later (half the time it took to climb up!!) I was at the pier.





I was a little early so I took the chance to snap some photos of the beautiful white sandy bay and all the long hosts that were lined up along it.



At 12:50 it was time to meet. The cruise was very full so we had to have two boats to carry everyone. Luckily I got to go on the yacht which was very cool and felt more like proper sailing as we had a sail and a boom.





The cruise begun with cliff-jumping which I'd done before, but was a lot tricker! You had to don wet suit shoes before jumping off the boat because the cliff was so spikey, and to make things harder there were huge waves chucking you back and forth against the rocks as you tried to get close enough to climb up.



I tried my best to climb up onto the rocks, but my shoes were too big and kept slipping off so I had to hold onto them whilst trying to climb. To add further to the challenge my bikini didn't want to stay up! I'm not a strong swimmer, so after 15 minutes of trying to tread water in the queue to get up the cliff, whilst the waves chucked me against the spikey rocks, I had to give up and swim back to the boat for fear of drowning!





Next stop was Viking Bay where Bob, our captain, explained how there was a drink made from bird snot which was worth lots of money. The bird snot was found in the nests at the top of the rocks in this area which were patrolled by the hunters.

After that it was on to Maya Bay, which is famous because 'The Beach', staring Leonado DiCaprio, was filmed there. To get from our boat you either had to swim or kayak over, since I wanted to take my camera, kayaking was my only option. Bob very kindly triple-dry-bagged my camera and paddled me across to the rope ladder where you had to climb over to get to Maya Bay. I'd heard Maya Bay was a tourist hotspot but nothing prepared me for the volume of tourists and boats on the beach. There were at least 10 speed boats full of tourists and around 10 long-tail boats as well. It was near impossible to get a photo without another tourist getting in the way! But I waited patiently determined to get a least one!







The last stop was an amazing cove between two huge cliffs, which just one other boat had found. There we found a rope swing, caves and a sound system playing party music. Excited to go explore we filled up our cups and grabbed new beers and kayaked across to the cove from the boat. Some oven group jumped off their boat wearing life jackets like nappies which was very funny to watch. The water was early warm and shallow so we were able to have a drunken game of frisbee in the water (we weren't very good but it was lots of fun all the same!)



Here the second boat joined us and we cranked up the music and partied until the sun started to go down.



As we sailed back to the pier the grand finale of the day was the sun setting gorgeous yolk and tangerine hues, against the silhouette of Phi Phi's cliffs.


1 comment:

  1. I thought "Pee Pee viewpoint" was where you had a Pee with a good view. You have had a fabulous holiday Eshe and it has been interesting to read about it while you have been on it. xx

    ReplyDelete