Your typical Monday

Monday morning I woke up bright and early, well, early at least, and took a tour boat out to Phi Phi Islands. This is a chain of islands off the coast of Phuket where the films "The Beach" and "The Man with the Golden Gun" were filmed. The islands were as beautiful as anything I had ever seen and the weather was equally beautiful. The boat ride took about 45 minutes, which entailed sitting on a speed boat with a bunch of tourists--many of them in speedos. I can't say I felt particularly social on this morning, and my feet were absolutely killing me. I had bought a pair of sandals the previous day and proceeded to walk several miles over rocky terrain. The sandals didn't fit well at all, and they gored holes in my tootsies. Thankfully, I didn't need sandals on this day.

This is the island where "The Man with the Golden Gun" was filmed. It is aptly called James Bond Island. See how blue the water is--this is not a product of trick photography nor is it a convenient glare. This must be the best place for swimming in the entire world. There are cliffs like this one one each side, providing shade and scenery. The water is cool, deep, and devoid of fish, creatures, rocks, debris, and man-made structures. The only thing it is not devoid of is tourists like myself. While the pictures are meant to look like I was here by myself, there were actually several other boats full of speedo-clad sight seers. The water was still as pleasant and refreshing as could be, and the sun was radiant.


Here is the final stop on the tour. After having lunch on the resortiest of the islands, we stopped on this small island with a great beach and world-class snorkeling. The tour guide was kind enough to take this photo of yours truly. I had asked him if he knew Eileen, and he had never heard of her. I walked around the far end of the island, away from the crowd, and found a quieter place to snorkel. It paid off, as I was the only person in our group to see a shark. I actually saw two of them, but I didn't get a really close look. As soon as I started swimming towards them, they darted away. I couldn't identify the species, but I'm pretty sure they were either great whites or tiger sharks. They're lucky they swam away, cause I might have killed them with my bare hands. I also saw a huge variety of different colorful fish, which were much less shy than the sharks. I would swim among these things and some of them would swim right up to my face, as if to say: "Hey whitey!". After I got out of the water, I sat on a chair on the beach under an umbrella and drank coconut milk out of a coconut through a straw. This made up for the Pina Colada that caught me off guard the day before.


This is a shot of the back end of the island, where I snorkeled. There was no way around the shore without getting my backpack wet, so I went up and over. It was hard work getting to the top of this thing, but the view made it well worth it. These islands were stunningly beautiful, and the water was the perfect temperature. Something that I took note of on this venture, that I had also noted the day before was the fact that there were no visible signs of the tsunami which devastated this coast just over a year ago. I remarked to one of my fellow tourists on the way back from this venture that if I hadn't known about the tsunami from the news, I would have no idea that this had happened here.

I got back to the motel around six that evening, and I was thoroughly exhausted. My feet were swollen, cut, and bruised, and I was looking forward to a quiet night around the resort. I hung out with some British tourists that evening and kept it very low key. The past two days had been tremendous, yet something was missing. Despite the incredible natural beauty, delicious food, beers, and wonderful service, I had realized that my vacation was sorely lacking one crucial element...