Visit Koh Phi Phi

So after our last escapade I figured I should post a plug for Thailand. If you've never been out of the country or you have and would like to find more places to visit I must suggest to you Koh Phi Phi Thailand. It's an island atmosphere so things are really laid back. I don't know why more U.S. residents don't travel abroad and especially why not to Thailand. It really isn't that far and if you just want to be a tourist it's easy to navigate and it's cheap to live. Koh Phi Phi was hit pretty hard by the Tsunami and the people are working really hard to build it back up. A lot of work has alfeady been done and P.P. is definitely up and operating. You should visit if you are planning a cool vacation.

Here are the things I liked about the island; Ordering fruit shakes in tropcial flavors from small stands with Thai pancakes cut in squares that you eat with a skewer stick, Stepping out on the veranda every morning and seeing the Andaman sea calm and nestled between two mountains that create a bay, Hiking up to the viewpoint and watching the sunset behind the other islands, Laying in a hammock at the top viewpoint overlooking the bay and far off islands while dangling over lush jungle landscape, Sweating hard while throwing sandbags in the rain to new friends who came to the island to do the same.

In terms of the work it's mostly done by hand. This is why I had a blood blister the first day we tried to work. When it came to our last couple of days on the island I was right on the dock with the rest of the Thai workers picking up our goods for the garden. The feeling was weird since the dock meant something totally different to me when we arrived 2 and a half weeks prior. After hauling 200 bags of of soil on a trolley (a wide, steel hand truck) with my English partner Sean Pual, I felt like I was really in the thick of it. Meanwhile, Mateo was the resident cement man and didn't have an opportunity to partake in this project. It's funny how we're on the same trip but will have lots of different stories to tell. I'm sure his account of the tablighi jammat (the Muslim brothers) will be much different from mine, as well as some of his stories from the garden, ask him about the dragon when we get back. While he was working cement I seemed to typically be on the trolley. We used broken coral to build a retention wall and when the tide was really low and far out we would take the trolley out and load it down with the coral. We had to lift these really heavy pieces from the wet sand and dump them onto the trolley and then push it back up to the retention wall. This was about a 200 meter round trip with 4 people pushing and pulling. When we could this is how we spent our afternoon. Until the full moon stopped all that. You get really familiar with the tide when your job depends on it.

Joronda