KO PHI PHI LEH

As I mentioned back in April, Ko Phi Phi is made up of two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don and Ko Phi Phi Leh. Ko Phi Phi Leh is the smaller of the two, and is where the Danny Boyle movie The Beach was filmed with Leonardo DiCaprio. The island has no residents and is only open for day trips, and because of the film it has become hugely popular. Dana and I decided to check it out, so we hired a long tail boat and took off for the island. Once we left the bay at Ton Sai Village the swells got pretty big, the water is rough during the monsoon season. Our first stop was this beautiful, emerald green bay (the picture in the top right). And although most boats just come in, cirlce around, and leave, we asked if we could get out and hang out on the one little beach there for a while. It was real nice. After that we took off for Maya Bay, the place were they filmed The Beach. Since we were in a small long tail boat, and the sea was rough and dangerous, we were forced to access the beach from the back side of the island. We anchored the boat in a little harbor and jumped into the water to swim ashore. The picture on the bottom right is of the ladder we had to climb to get onto land. The waves were rather big at times and we had to pull ourselves to shore using a series of ropes, it was exciting. Once we were on land we hiked through the jungle on a little path to the beach. The Beach beach was beautiful, I guess, but it actually wasn't that great. It was jam-packed, I can't even imagine what it's like during the busy season, and there was quite a bit of trash on the ground. There were a number of obnoxious speed boats in the bay that were revving thier engines real loud, and some doofus had beached his sailboat like thirty feet off shore. We stayed there for like five minutes. The best part about it was getting there. After that we headed back to Ko Phi Phi Don to catch a 3 o'clock ferry to Railay...