Bioluminescence

Without a doubt, bioluminescence is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life, and is reason enough to become scuba certified. But, more on that shortly.

We arrived in Krabi late on the 12th, and went straight to our hotel called the Blue Village. (We booked it at Bangkok airport. A grievous error considering we got charged double.) It was low season, and there was not one other guest at our entire resort. The next morning we immediately transferred to Koh Phi Phi via a two hour ferry boat ride from Ao Nong. It turns out that all of the scuba operators in Krabi take you two hours each way out to the coral reefs just off of Koh Phi Phi anyway, so we just decided to stay there.

However, it wasn't trivial getting to the island. When we boarded the ferry, Ryan and I thought we got the best seats in the house. We were sitting right in front of the captain's room, and had a great view. Everything was smooth sailing until we got out of the bay. Suddenly, the boat starting bobbing up and down and crashing into the waves, and each time we got heavily sprayed with warm ocean water. I genuinely thought it was only going to last for one or two waves, so I chose to stick it out. Within 3 minutes, I was soaking wet, at which point, I just figured that I would chill there anyway since there was nothing else to lose. Well, after 15 minutes of getting pounded, I decided to move to the back of the boat. Of course, as soon as I did that, it started to downpour. So, we went inside the cabin of the boat, which just happened to be the most well air-conditioned room I'd been in in over a month. (I am pretty sure I was shivering for 45 minutes straight.)

Once we arrived in Koh Phi Phi though, everything was instantly better. This island is all mountains that are connected by a small isthmus not wider than 750 feet, and, at most, 1/2 mile long. It's waters are crystal clear blue water at a balmy 86 degrees. Oh, and they also have amazing Banana Shakes. In a word, paradise. So much so, that we had a bit too much to drink our first night, which we definitely paid the price for the next morning.

Our diving trip to Bida Nai left at 8 am...brutally early after a late night of beer drinking. Ryan was much worse off than I, and it was clear when halfway through our trip out to the reef, Ryan suddenly lost all color in his face and rushed off to the bathroom. (Personally, I would have just hurled off the side of the boat.) However, it didn't dissuade us from diving, and that morning we saw two leopard sharks and a black tipped reef shark.

Later that night, we also went for our first night dive. While it was interesting to be in the water at night (it was a new moon, so it was truly pitch black), and see barracuda's feeding all around us, nothing was as cool as bioluminescence. I'd heard about this, but couldn't quite fathom how amazing it really is. Once I discovered that I could simply wave my hand and have it light up in front of me, everything else in the dive sort of lost its luster. In fact, I'd say that I spent the next 15 minutes pretty much exclusively focused on my hand, and trying to keep my torch off as much as possible.

The following day we dived at two different sites and saw some more great marine life. We also ate extremely well. There is one restaurant called Papaya on the island that serves outstanding Thai food, including my new favorite curry, masaman curry. If you've never tried it, give it a go, you won't be disappointed. (Oh, and of course I had many more banana shakes.)

On our third day on the island, we went rock climbing with SpiderMonkey. The karst formations here are very similar to the limestone in Halong Bay. They provide fantastic climbing routes, and for some reason, the rock is softer on Phi Phi than it is in Krabi and Rai Lay. We climbed three different routes, one of which was 120 feet in a single pitch. (I didn't even know they made 80 meter ropes.) The picture of the bay is from the top of my climb.

The next day we headed back to Rai Lay beach on the mainland so that we could easily transfer to the airport for our flight, and because it is the best known place for climbing in the area. What I didn't expect was for it to also have one of the most amazing beaches I've ever seen. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to beach it up, because we were climbing very early the next morning.

We did four climbs the following morning, the tallest of which was about 100 feet. But, what made this climbing unique was that it was right on the water. And I mean, we had to move the rope and take off our shoes while being belayed so that they didn't get wet when it was high tide. You can see from the photos that we had to coil the rope on a mat while standing in 1 foot deep water. (This was one of the best climbing experiences of my life. If you are a climber, this is a destination not to be missed.)