Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report: Phi Phi Part 2

Thailand Trip Report: Chiang Mai and Koh Phi Phi March 10-23

Part 2 Koh Phi Phi

After a fun, activity packed 4 days in Chiang Mai, our group of 6 flew down to Phuket to catch a private jet boat to the Holiday Inn on Phi Phi. It was a little more expensive than the regular ferry but way less crowded, left on our schedule and only took an hour as opposed to 3 hours. Well worth the money if you ask me. 2 of us, rode on the bow of the boat and had a blast! We kept looking for whale sharks, alas, none to be found. Arriving at the Holiday Inn, they cart you from the boat to the resort on a little wagon and they won't let you jump off, even though it was only a few feet. It was very funny. They have a band playing. Very cute. They take you to the outdoor lobby and greet you with a cold towel and cool drink. Very refreshing. The Holiday Inn is a 4 star place and just lovely. Very upscale accomendations and very polite and helpful staff, even when there was a problem. They messed up the room assignments and only myself and my friend were able to stay on the waterfront while my other friends had to be in the next row back due to a misunderstanding on the hotels part. Their rooms were fine but our bungalow ROCKED. Right on the water about 40 feet from our door. The AC runs only when the key to the room is in the slot so we would just leave the key in the slot in the late afternoon and slightly prop the door open so we could get in. By bedtime it was perfect. I guess we were lucky nobody robbed us but they have in room safes and security guards everywhere so we felt pretty secure in leaving the room open. Plus, it gets really hot and you want a cool room to sleep in. They had flowers on the beds, a minibar and bottles of drinking water. No TV (thank God) but they did have a phone. It is a bit of a "couples" resort but with 6 of us we took over the place. They had a breakfast and dinner buffet which rotated t themes every night. The Thai night was our favorite. They had outdoor seating and Thai dancing too. Beer were outrageously cheap with hard liquor being a bit more. Everything was put on a tab for the end. Lunches were served a la carte on a very lovely deck (which was also great on a stormy afternoon to play drunken scrabble). The massages on the beach, while a bit more than Chiang Mai were still like $25 USD on a massage table right on the beach. The waves and the smell of jasmine were intoxicating. I had a few of those!
The diving was not as great as I had anticipated secondary to some weird mirky stuff in the water. I guess it was effecting all of southeast Asia during March. So, needless to say, visibility was 15-30 feet at times. It was also during the new or 'black" moon so the tides were really large as were some of the currents. Our group was a really experienced dive group so the conditions were only disappointing and not really that challenging. The big disappointment lay with the resorts dive operations. H20 Sportz was kind of a loosely run ship. They really didn't give us a run down of when to be where or where to store our gear or anything and were a little miffed when we asked these basic questions. We were there while there was a group of 9 Italians so we had them operating at max capacity with 2 boats (one of which they had to get from Phuket with half fills on the tanks and a really bad dive boat). We had a DM the first 3 days who had only been a DM for 7 months and only 3 months at this resort. All of that would have been OK, I guess had he spoken English. With no real dive briefing before each dive, we had no idea if it was a drift dive, if there were currents or what. It got pretty frustrating and I actually ended up leading (and ending a dive which he tried to have us kick into the current 3/4 of the way thru the dive) one dive. We would surface and there was no boat to be found....for like 20 mins! If our group had been less experienced they would have freaked. I spoke to the head Instructor at the dive shop and he switched us up and had us diving with himself or another Instructor who spoke English, which helped a lot. Still, we would surface and the boat was no where to be found at times. While we know we are responsible for our own set-up and such, there were many times we would be about to do our giant strides off the back of the boat an d one of us would holler at our buddy that there tank strap was undone or that the inflator hose was not hooked up to our BC's. The whole operation was a bit too layed back for the amount of money we were paying. I would give the whole operation a C- for overall performance. Still the guys were nice enough and bought us rounds of beer on our last night.
Be sure to hike over to Tonsai Bay from the resort. Everyone said "not recommended" to us which made us want to do it more.Something about snakes and death..... Follow the red ties on the trees and you will be fine. It was hot as hell but really an adventure. It was very much like the movie "the Beach" when you leave paradise and go into town to the booming music, the massage places, tattoo parlors and the dive shops. I was totally over stimulated! We had a beer and got the hell out of there. What was interesting was all the new building going on 2 years after the tsunami. Tons of it and hiking over the island you could still see the damage of washed up concrete pylons or 40 foot palm trees snapped off at the top. Crazy stuff.
Taking a long tail water taxi back to the resort in a storm was quite the adventure too. Thought we were going to die but then just drank some more beer and we were OK!
Phi Phi was fun and pretty with the beautiful beaches, limestone cliffs and monkey beach. Truly a paradise to be seen.
Susie