Ko Phi Phi to Ao Nang: Longtail Love

After breakfast, we dropped our bags off at the front desk of our bungalows and headed to the beach to catch our longtail boat. Our boat driver helped us find fins and masks for snorkeling before loading us into the boat and hopping on himself. I’m not sure if I have ever properly explained longtail boats… so here it goes, for those of you who don’t know! The longtail boats are about 25 feet long, made of wood and bamboo, with a ten foot long pole hanging out the back end. That pole has a motor on the end of it, and the longtail drivers use that to steer and navigate easily through very shallow waters. Now that you know, back to our longtail story. Upon getting the boat going, our captain starting singing in Thai at the top of his lungs (which sounded like normal volume considering the noise the engine made). It made for a lot of entertainment and was actually quite calming!

Our first stop was within the harbor bay of Ko Phi Phi, to a small stretch of sand known affectionately as Monkey Beach. We hopped out of our longtail and watched other tourists feed the twenty or so monkeys bread. Because we were on the budget longtail ride, our captain didn’t give us any bread and when we tried to feed them some discarded pineapple we found out why it had been discarded: the monkeys wouldn’t eat it! We watched the shenanigans for a bit and took a quite swim before climbing up our rusty two step ladder and onto our bamboo seats.

Next we headed across the passage to Phi Phi Ley and into a bay that we can’t recall the name of. We couldn’t help but noticing that the seas were much calmer today than our scuba diving day, and we were loving the glassy waters! This particular bay was lacking in sandy beaches, but made up for it in the eerie turquoise color of the ocean and the sheer limestone cliffs that descending directly into those waters. Absolutely gorgeous! Despite the fact that there were about ten other boats in the bay with us, we were still able to revel in the beauty of the seemingly untouched jungley bay.

After another short longtail ride around to the southern part of Phi Phi Ley, we came to Lo Sa Ma Bay, filled with still more tourist boats and hundreds of snorkelers (most wearing life jackets!). We hoped in with the snorkelers and realized why they were all enjoying themselves so much: there were hundreds of small blue and yellow fish right at the surface! In addition to those, there were lots of big clams that slam shut when you get too close, and we probably had a little too much fun diving down and fanning our fins in front of them to watch the snap. This spot was really mellow with the same steep cliffs and beautiful blue water (I really just can’t get over the color of the water here, and Justin just informed me that I recently purchased a pair of knock off Ray Bans that are almost the exact same color…). After a bit of snorkeling here with our leaky masks and broken snorkels, our captain told us in very broken English that we had to either swim to the stairs at one end of the bay and walk to Maya Bay (where The Beach was filmed) or pay an extra fee to take the boat in. We decided to walk, of course!

The stairs were pretty damn steep, but other than that the walk took about five minutes through the jungle. We emerged onto a beach that very well may be the perfect beach. Maya Bay is a huge bay that opens from a rather narrow ocean outlet lined with hundreds of feet of vertical limestone cliffs, gradually fading away to a long stretch of snow white sand backed by jungle. The turquoise water of the sandy shores darkens to royal blue and then finally to navy before reaching the open sea beyond the cliffs. Some of the limestone cliffs on the far edges of the beach have had the bottoms worn away and overhang the beaches in a cave like way. It’s just stunning! We stayed on the beach for about an hour before heading back to our longtail and making our way back to Ko Phi Phi.

We got on the ferry to Ao Nang without any issues. It was pretty hot, but we were both able to take cat naps before heading up to take in the view of the approaching mainland. Our ferry stopped to let off about half of the passengers at Railay Beach, how reached the shore via longtail boats. While this was all happening, we were able to take in the aptly named “rock climbers’ paradise”: limestone cliffs formed caves directly over the ocean but kept descending deeper than we could see into the blue waters. We decided we would have to take a day trip here!

The bungalows we stayed in were just a bit off the beach and set into a very jungle like setting, and seemed to fit there nicely: everything was bamboo and dark wood and very unimposing. They were great! We walked to the beach for sunset, and headed to find a dinner spot. Our waiter at dinner was most definitely a lady boy in training or in hiding: his fingernails were twice as long as mine have ever been and he was wearing very feminine diamond rings and walked with an attempted girly sway of the hips. Either way, the food was good and the staff was entertaining!