Day 2: Phi Phi Island tour

Day 2 at Krabi was spent at Phi Phi Island! It is a booked tour through YourKrabi.com, with transportation, meals and itinerary fully covered. Which meant minimal planning on our part:) A trip to phi phi island is mainly done through speedboats or long tail boats. Long tail boats are cheaper, offer more privacy but travelling takes much longer time compared to a speedboat. Most people opt for the speedboat option, like us! Another option will be to stay at a resort on the island, and usually the resort will provide free ferrying to the resort!:)

The day started at 8.00am where all tourists that wanted to go phi phi island gathered at their hotel lobbies to wait for the mini vans from different tour companies to pick them up. Although it was quite disorganised, they were actually very punctual! The pick up bay for the speedboats was along aonang beach! 

After detouring to Raliey beach to pick up more people, we travelled pass Chicken islands and reached Maya Bay after 40 minutes of windy and bumpy speedboat ride:)

Crystal clear turquoise water surrounded by vertical cliffs, Maya Bay is really such a beau:) Sadly, to get there, you will need to be ferried by speedboats between 8am to 3pm. After 4pm, only people staying on the islands have exclusive excess to this place. Also, we had to pay a national park entry fee of 400THB per person. My visit there two years before did not include this additional fee, hence it was lucky that the tour agency reminded us to bring extra cash beforehand!

 

Photo below was me there two years before!! OMG.. Can see that thanks to jw's gropro 4, photos were so wide-angled and clear!! YIPPEE:)

After making several stops on the way to monkey island and another island which I forgot the name, where we got to jump off the boat into the deep clear waters (WAS SO THRILLING AND COLD), we stopped for buffet lunch catered at a big open air sheltered venue on Phi Phi Don. After which, we had some time on our hand to relax along the coast. I miss moments like this in Singapore...

Snorkelling was also part of the itinerary that I was really looking forward to:) We opted to wear the life jacket as the currents were quite choppy and the sea bed had many sea urchins! We were also advised against stepping on the corals for our own safety:)

The tour guide even dived down to take a starfish and sea urchin for us to see and touch!!

Our last stop! Overall, the tour was excellent as we were given a lot of free time to roam around, with each destination allocated an hour or more:) Both of us felt like it wasn't like a typical tour whereby the guide will rush us from destination to destination. Instead, we were given the liberty to decide how long we would like to spend at each location. And lucky for us, our tour mates were all very punctual, which meant that we sticked well to the schedule right till the end.

After we got back to Aonang and washing up, we were out in time to catch the beautiful sunset:) It was a really memorable experience, to just quietly sit along the beach and watch the marigold sun sink into the horizon.

Ended the night with Nutella banana pancake for supper!! According to the store's menu, this has become so famous it was labelled as one of Thailand's national dish.