Pee Pee Islands?

Over the weekend I rolled out to the Phi Phi Islands (unfortunately pronounced “Pee Pee”) with a couple cool guys (Zach and Luke) from Wisconsin.  They’d been out here around six weeks and are leaving early Tuesday, while I’m leaving late Tuesday and we all agreed it was time to get out and see some ocean.

After a bus ride and a long ferry ride (1.5+ hours), we arrived at Phi Phi Island.  The water throughout the entire trip was amazing, but I was really impressed at the quality of the water in the small bay where all the boats came in – usually that amount of boat traffic really wreaks havoc!  We popped off and started to explore the civilized part of the island with finding a place to stay being our first priority.

We wandered the entire area (not very large) for around an hour until finally settling on a cozy little air conditioned bungalow right near the beach for  2500 baht (~$80USD), then arranged for a boat to take us on a tour of the islands including swimming and snorkeling.

Nothing I say about this is going to match the experience, just look at the photos (I also shot a bit of video and will put together a reel soon).  Some random bits:

• The movie “The Beach” was filmed in Maya Bay and nobody lets you forget it.  “Oh you go The Beach? You know, where movie film?”  “This The Beach from movie!”  etc.
• “The Beach” charged us 200 baht each to walk on it.  WTF.
• The water was seriously amazing, snorkeling was beautiful, I very much regretted not pulling the trigger on an underwater camera.  Tons of fish and wildlife.
• Zach and I almost got eaten by a giant freaking lizard that we didn’t notice about five feet away from us as we walked down the trail – Luke spotted it just before the inevitable attack (okay it probably wasn’t going to eat us but it was pretty intense, that thing was HUGE).

Back on the main island as the sun set, we treated ourselves to pizza (not bad actually) and began to wander the area looking for someone fun to hang out for a few hours before crashing out.  Oddly, the island seemed almost abandoned compared to earlier and we didn’t really see many people until after 7PM – even then, nobody was at any of the many bars and clubs.  We knew we wanted to go to the Reggae Bar but no one was around…  finally we just rolled over there and hung out playing pool for a bit waiting for things to liven up.

Why the Reggae Bar?  Well, Zach had apparently heard about this place and we had confirmed earlier – they have Muay Thai *ring* in the middle of the bar and give free drinks to tourists who FIGHT EACH OTHER in it.  Dead serious!  It happened.

Around 10PM the place got jammed up really quick and I ran back to get my camera.  The first fight was between an Israeli guy named Alex who we had been hanging out with and some other guy.  The fights were all three one-minute rounds with a few minutes of rest between rounds and everyone had headgear, gloves, and shinpads (but no mouthpiece or cup)…  Knees and elbows were banned, but almost everyone had absolutely no idea how to really fight (or were really wasted).

It was a ton of fun to watch and get into, a couple of the fights were pretty good even though the combatants were not at all skilled.  All three of us were tempted to get in there and go for it, but our experience training here tempered that and none of us risked it (we were concerned we’d start throwing elbows and knees out of habit or hurt someone with a head kick or something – plus let’s be honest, only an idiot fights drunkenly on a stage in Thailand).

The first highlights of the night were two matches between girls who seriously beat each other up, it was pretty wicked and only would’ve been more awesome if there was jello involved.  The absolute best though was when they brought out two professional Muay Thai fighters who proceeded to “fight” in full-on WWF style, head kick after head kick followed by faked flying across the ring, grimacing in pain, etc.  Near the end of the fight, one caught the other with a teep kick then followed up with a full speed flying knee to the “face” which would have probably killed the other guy if it was real – but it was awesomely acted.  The fight ended shortly thereafter when one of the fighters “got mad” at the referee and punched him out, then the two fighters scissor kicked each other and “knocked” each other out. 

Another ref then came out and pretended to fix the first ref’s “dislocated” shoulder while they dragged the fighters off…  Seriously, it was awesome.  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.

Sometime after midnight we decided to close out early and crashed out for the night, then grabbed the morning ferry back.  Two more days of training for me the I’m off to India Tuesday night!