If you want to get drunk, kickbox in a bar, play beer pong, get a tattoo, get charged twice as much as anywhere else in Thailand, and feel generally claustrophobic on smelly, narrow streets where the employees aggressively try to get you to come inside, then Ko Phi Phi is the island Paradise for you! Otherwise avoid it like your annoying co-worker at the office.
I knew it was overpriced but I figured I could find a cheap place outside of town. ... A wall of mountains encloses the tiny port town, there is no outside of town. Sure, there's other parts to the island and more resorts, but it seemed to me they were only accessible by tailboat ride. I ended up not even bothering. I just wanted out as soon as I got in.
The ferry drops you off in a bay. My ferry carried a high percentage of Chinese. I discovered that this is "Golden Week" in China. It's a week long national holiday when many of China's citizen's fancy taking a trip. Many of them usually go to South Korea, but because of the whole 'scare of a possible mushroom cloud outside your hotel room window' thing, this year they came to Thailand instead. It's their number one destination this year! Lucky me. The Chinese have an unfortunate reputation of being rude while vacationing to other countries. I discovered that this rep is deserved. They have a different concept of how to behave in a line, or how to form one. The pushiness wasn't unexpected, merely confirmed. It's as nomal to them as xenophobia and wasting food is in America.
As I exited the ferry, I and all the other tourists were hit up with an unexpected 20 THB charge to get on the island. It's a tax for the amount of waste created and environmental clean up needed because of the tourists (Um, I kind of don't understand that logic, but not a topic worth delving into at this time.)
After paying the "you ruin our island on which we built a bunch of hotels and bars for you to please come and spend money" tax, I passed the usual line of taxi drivers and travel agents asking, "Where you going?" "Where you stay?" I've begun to feel less like a pirate when docking at a pier and more like the pilot in the movie Airplane- The one who fights the religious evangelists as he walks through the airport. The difference on Ko Phi Phi was that the aggressive behavior didn't stop once I got past the docks. Every Bar had someone out front trying to get you to come inside. Travel agents, massage parlors, and restaurants were the same. It was like going to a party where half the people there were those guys that stand on the Vegas strip and try to hand you a pamphlet.
The streets were brick sidewalks only wide enough for a group of four oblivious people to walk along side one another while everyone else is forced to use the single lane of space to pass them or go the opposite direction. With the buildings sometimes being two to three stories high on each side, and there being a ring of mountains surrounding the village, I felt enclosed and trapped.
I looked for a hostel. I found one for one-fifty baht that I passed on. It was a room with 12 beds and a bathroom smack dab in a crowded part of town. That was it, slide the patio door open, and there's the beds and bathrooms up against the street. No thanks. The other hostels were 400-600 THB a night. They were crowded and they had the bathroom in the bedrooms. One place only had a bed for me directly in front of the bathroom, no thanks.
As I started to become so frustrated that I was about to inquire about the next ferrry off the island that day, a woman called out asking if I need a room. She said five hundred baht. I asked if there was air and internet. She said yes, and a balcony. Ok sounds good.
She showed me the room. It was a dump. It had a balcony above the street though, the balcony was wide enough to stand on, but not sit on. It was really more of a ledge with a railing. The air conditioning only turned on if you placed your room key in a slot that turned the electricity in the room on. I ended giving up on the air conditioning. Fanning myself with my hand worked better than the AC. I left the air on, opened both my doors and hoped for a breeze. On the upside, the internet worked great. I watched a lot of Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers clips that night.
And, yeah, nothing says class like a dog-eared poster of a topless Asian woman...
View from my ledge...
After showering I walked down the steep, ladder-like, flight of stairs. The stairs ended behind a desk where one of the masseuses from the massage parlor sits. It wasn't until she introduced herself that I realized I was above a massage parlor. All my digs needed at this point was a blinking red neon sign directly outside my window. The masseuse was very friendly, asked me what I was doing that evening, where I was going, and then said I should get a massage before I go. I said thank you and went off to find a bottle of water and maybe something to do.
The chairs where the masseuses sat and waited for clients. I took this early in the morning, unfortunately no one was there...
I didn't find anything to do on all three of my excursions out of the room. However, I only made it til 10pm because I was exhausted from traveling and finding my room. Particular bars may have livened up but I doubt it. THere was a bar where you could get in a ring and kickbox, but by 10pm, they still weren't boxing. You had to buy a drink at the door, so I didn't go in to explore. It was empty anyway. At other bars, a few people played beer pong. The place was just seedy in general. It had a seedy vibe.
And I had to get a picture of this...
...Then I went back to my room above the massage parlor.
On my second trip down the ladder stairs, there was a new masseuse downstairs. She was actually quite attractive in a sketchy massage parlor kind of way. On my way out she had introduced herself, offered a massage, and as I left gave me a soft handshake with an extra little rub of her middle finger gently back and forth across my palm. I got the signal. Yes, it was that kind of "massage" parlor.
This lovely lady made this even more obvious upon my return to the ladder stairs. She linked my arm and ascended the stairs with me, telling me she would give me good...Ahem. Then as I was putting my key in my door, she grabbed the area she had promised to massage. Wow, yeah, I was in it. I thought she was going to follow me in the room. Those of you who know me well probably find it hilarious to think of me scurrying up the stairs with her hanging on me, as I say, "No thank you. Really, thank you though. I'm good thank- OH! Hi there! Okay, really, Ok bye now, thank you." And I duck in my room.
The next morning I found a breakfast buffet for 200 Baht and came across a good distinction between the two types of places you can eat in Thailand. You can eat at the upscale place that immediately chases a cat off the premises if it dare try to make a visit, and there are the places I go, like the buffet where a cat lounged on the wooden table next to the omelet guy in the kitchen like he owned the place.
Oh, the happy ending? That was me escaping to the awesome island paradise of Ko Lanta the next morning.
Thanks for reading, upvote, resteem, smile, skywrite about me, yahda, yahda, yahda, and please give my good friend @ninjadriver a warm welcome to steemit. He plans to post about being a pastor that drives for Uber and he's one of the funniest men I've ever met..
Finally managed to catch up with your adventures...loved the pictures...too bad for the cute massage girl :))
Have fun!
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