Tobias travels to South-East Asia and beyond!

Because the ticking you hear is your life passing you by!

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Location: London, United Kingdom

In my thirty's and slowly loosing my misanthropic streak!

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Mr. Monsoon visits Phi Phi



Jumped on a ferry from Krabi that took an hour and a half and then jumped ashore on Phi Phi Island.
The first thing I see walking off the pier is this really tall Thai guy with long dread locks and big Rasta beanie on his head. On top of that he’s also holding a sign that had my name on it (I had pre-booked my hotel in Krabi).
I half expected him to say something along the lines of “Hello blood, welcome to Jamaica…I mean Phi Phi” but instead he was a really soft spoken and one of the nicest Thai people I’ve met so far.
Walking to the hotel I realized that there had been a lot of rain. It was almost impossible to walk some of the streets because of the huge big puddles that the rain had created everywhere.
I asked my favorite Rasta Thai if there had been a lot of rain and he just looked up and said “A little, maybe more lately”.
Checked into my room and fell asleep for a couple of hours but was woken up by an awful noise. It was the rain coming and it sounded like someone was dropping a bucket of nails on the roof of my cabin.
Went outside and the sight was just incredible, no drizzle here my friends. Instead it was more like the producers of Evian had decided to drop their whole early supply all at once.
It continued for another two hours and then let up a bit and I decided to take the opportunity to go down to check out the beach.
Phi Phi was one of the islands that were hit really badly by the 2005 tsunami and there still were signs everywhere. I had seen photographs at the hotel and pretty much the whole west side of the island was torn to pieces by the wave and the devastation was horrific.
Walking on the beach and seeing all the rubble that still laid around made me think a lot about the terror such a disaster must have caused on such a small place. A lot of people died and I can only imagine what it must have been like with no where to go at such a small place (Phi Phi is about the size of Hyde Park I think).
The rain pretty much continued constantly for the following four days. I chilled out, read a lot of books and took the opportunity to walk around whenever I could despite having to navigate around the ever increasing puddles. Watched football in the evenings and laughed at the excitement of the male tourists enjoying their free “wet t-shirt” competition every night when the soaked girls were walking past.
It was time to leave after four nights since Mr. Monsoon had decided to up his game and made the rain start at eight in the morning and finished at four at night.
I did enjoy my stay even if the weather was poor. There was so much construction and rebuilding going on at the island that I can only imaging what it’s going to look like when I go back there in a couple of years.

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