The waters of Phi Phi Leh, Mosquito, and Bamboo Islands

I headed down to the dock early this morning as I had an all day snorkel and kayak trip around the neighboring islands. Depending on which “shop” you visit and how your negotiation skills hold up, the cost of this trip varies. For the full day, including equipment, lunch, fresh fruit, and a guide who spoke single word English (“Picture” - meaning you should take a picture, “Water” - meaning go snorkel, etc), I paid 600 Bhat, which I felt good about as the ticket had a face value of 700 Bhat. I have never been in to snorkeling, in fact to use a Thai saying, “snorkeling, swimming, same same”, that was until this trip. You saw everything and literally jumped off the boat in to schools of very colorful fish, it blew my mind, just like in the pages of the National Geographic. We first headed to Phi Phi Leh, if you have seen the movie “The Beach”, this is the place it was filmed. I feel a little bad about posting pictures of it as they cannot begin to capture the beauty of this place. Not even you watch this in high definition, 7.1 surround sound, and have a fan blowing a light breeze on you can you begin to understand this place. It is truly the most beautiful place I have been. Our first stop was Viking Cave on the far side of the island.


After our first stop I understood how things like in that movie Open Water could happen, as no counts were done as you got in and out of the water. You only knew it was time to go if you happened to see others get back on the boat or if you heard the guide shout “Moving”. If you missed it, then most likely another boat would be along tomorrow. As we headed around the island we saw Koh Bida off in the distance, a great place to watch the sunset and countless birds.


We continued around the island working our way towards Maya Bay or “The Secret Beach” from the movie.










Because of a no wake rule in the bay we had to jump ship on the other side of it, swim to shore, and then walk across the island. As we jumped in the water our guide shouted “shoes, shoes”, however most of us figured we could easily navigate the gravel, dirt, or anything else along the path to Maya Bay. We were right, however we soon realized the suggestion of shoes was because we had to cross about 50 yards of coral in getting to the shore. It was a painful almost impossible task, you could not swim because the water was not deep enough and walking was unstable and often resulted in falling. I survived with only a few cuts to my hand, however the salt water added to this experience. Once near shore we had to climb up through a rock tunnel. This is looking back out, also probably a good time to suggest bringing a zip lock bag on this trip for your camera, fortunately a fellow traveler had a fancy water proof beach bag and helped a number of us out.




We then started our trek across the island passing some amazing sights.




Until we came upon a view point and path that would lead us down to the “Secret Beach”.


However word is out and it’s not much of a secret anymore. In fact many companies have day trips from Phuket.


Even with the people this place is beautiful.


As we headed out we saw where the other boats would make a slow crawl toward the shore to prevent any wakes.


After Phi Phi Leh we headed to Shark Bay. I was a little concerned at first but felt better when I figured I could swim better then at least 20% of the people and that my cuts were no longer bleeding. But it did not make much of a difference as we only saw a few very small sharks.


After a stop here we made way for Monkey Beach. This place had everything and lots of it, Tangs, Puffers, Angles, Lions, and Clowns in Anemones. The best place I have ever snorkeled. However the one thing that it did not seem to have many of was the monkeys, only one or two. I thought someone was pretty good with Photoshop as the picture where I bought the ticket had lots of monkeys in it. I would later find that it was a different beach with the same name.






Next stop was Mosquito Island, if you like they will drop you off to stay the night and pick you up the following day, but I wanted to see the rest of the islands as well.




The neighboring island, Bamboo, was our next destination and it had some of the clearest water I have even been in, outside of a swimming pool.






We then headed back to Phi Phi Don.


Another amazing day. That evening I was reflecting on the day over a Chang beer when some backpackers from around Europe were trying to round up people to play poker. I joined them, really more for the conversation then the game, it was interesting to hear their stories, understand what brought them here, and share the evening with them.