One day trip to Phi Phi Islands

Friday was dedicated for a speed boat trip to Phi Phi Islands, which are around 30 min 'speedy' boat ride away from Nopparat Thara beach. There is some bliss involved when booking a complete day (from 9am - 4pm) tour - we got picked up at our hotel and driven to the above mentioned beach. There the guides 'color-coded' us - each got a different color sticker depending on the destination :) Yellow group - Phi Phi! We were around 22 persons on "our" boat - a rather peculiar mixture of Thai people, some Americans (one of them seriously reminded me of Ole Henriksen with a dash of Elton John :P), a couple from France and us. 

Man, I had forgotten how much fun it is to be on a speed boat (boat no. 99 in one of the pictures) - the last time I've done that is a few years ago in Florida. The best part, of course, is the moment when the boat hits a larger wave and jumps up in the air :) 

Anyway, the tour took us to several of the islands belonging to the Phi Phi group and we got to snorkel in 3 different locations. I had never tried snorkeling before, so that was a whole new experience for me. One of the reefs was in the open sea - absolutely beautiful - now I can understand why so many people get utterly fascinated by the underwater world and keep on re-living that special experience. All the fish in such bright colors (and that includes Dorothy from "Finding Nemo"! :P) - I don't have enough words to describe everything properly. Oh, and sea cucumbers are as disgusting as people say! :)

What I can say, though, is that the water in Andaman Sea is much more salty than in the Baltic Sea - very unpleasant to swallow, but somehow I didn't fully manage to avoid doing that :) Another lesson learned - it IS very easy to get a burned butt while snorkeling :P Used loads of sun lotion (factor 35 even) all over ourselves, but somehow our 'sitting areas' got excluded from the preservation treatment. Outcome - hmm... you can imagine :)

Amazing, amazing day - the beaches on the islands are even nicer than in Krabi; the white sand is so fine that it feels like you're pacing around in vast amounts of coffee creamer instead of sand. Unforgettable. 

And where we knackered in the end? Oh yeah.. so much that 1.5 hours airplane delay was about to send as into white rage :) Also, I think Christina's hearing was slightly impaired - during descent to BKK the pilot did the usual bla-bla talk (fluent English but with a very heavy Thai accent). All of a sudden Chri's looks at me and asks if I heard the same thing -  did the pilot reeeaaaaally say: "Miss, please be seated properly". Well, what I think he said was "Crew, prepare for landing".  This naturally led to some violent giggles (and yup, Im 100% positive we were highly annoying to the other passengers, hehe), but we couldn't help constructing different situations in our minds, where it would be appropriate and justified for the pilot to say that. And why would there be a "Miss" in the cockpit, and what would the "Miss" be doing and how could the "Miss" NOT be seated properly :)