HK5 Thailand: Chapter 3 Trash and More Trash

Water fun is paramount on Koh Phi Phi the bummer part was from 12pm-5pm every day the tide was out on the resort beach. Thankfully the resort has two pools. One that was located close to our bungalow was deemed an adult pool but kids were always in it. While location was prime the pool itself was tiled with 2 inch tiles which were chipped painful to walk on. The second pool was designed more kids with a slide and floating layout. Another plus is the full swim up bar and pool side restaurant delivery. Lets face it, what resort doesn’t have that? 

The resort beach, when the tide was in, was not a free space for kids to play where ever they want. Thanks in part to the large number of water taxi’s and speed boats docked all over. Letting your kids play freely is scary especially when the boats headed out of the cove. Some drive slowly, but most of them barrel out of the cove. Paley was very interested in doing the scuba diving course for kids. Margot was under the weather that day, so the twins napped while Papa took paley to a 3 hours scuba course. Most of the water practice was done in the adult pool. Clem felt instructors were very friendly and even offered to take paley out to the open water the next day. We already had a snorkel trip planned for the next day, so that option was out. Not to mention neither clem or I were prepared to scuba dive ourselves on the trip.

We had two days of snorkeling planned on the trip, the first trip being the longer of the two. This trip was a tour three different islands and two other secluded parts of Koh Phi Phi. Our first stop was to look at the bird caves (Viking Cave) which is now a sanctuary that is being worked by locals. The cove and caves look right out of a pirate movie with a lot of abandoned structures built into the side of the cliff rocks. From there we visited Maya Bay from a distance. The Bay which was made famous by the movie The Beach with Leo D. is a huge tourist hot spot. I only became aware of Koh Phi Phi from this movie and became very interested in Thailand thanks to this movie. The movie was launched in 2000 and steadily since 2000 the bay has seen over 4K visitors daily, since the movie sky rocketed into a legend. 

Sadly the bay paid the price for the movies fandom. At first I thought it just pumped up hoopla about the amount of garbage the tourists leave behind. But we soon learned in visiting three different beaches on smaller islands that the traffic and the trash that come with it, was very real. We actually found ourselves collecting trash and bringing it back to our speed boat, which I am sure pissed off our captain and his crew. In one small cove (Loh Samah Bay,) we swam to the beach and rested for 20-30 minutes and the garbage just kept washing on to the beach. It was heartbreaking. Maya Bay was gorgeous from afar, I can only imagine what it was like from the beach itself. The bay is still closed to tourists although we did see one boat crossed over the line and letting their tourists swim in the bay. Years of garbage and sunscreen basted swimmers have destroyed the coral reefs around the island and the bay.

Thanks to Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation and Ocean Quest, the islands has seen over 10K new coral plantings around the area. The real task is to help educate and curb littering for the hundreds of tour boats that visit the island. Currently the parks department has already slated Maya Bay to reopen in June 2021 but I wouldn’t be surprised that date doesn’t get pushed. They have a lot of work to do in getting the culture and tourism to become more eco-friendly. We did really enjoy our time swimming around Pileh Lagoon. We managed to get there when there were only two other boats and managed to park all the way into the lagoon. To be honest, I don’t think the boats should be allowed to park in the lagoon. We took so many wonderful shots in the lagoon and on the boat. 

On the way back to Koh Phi Phi we tried to visit the west side of the island. I strongly recommend not visiting this side of the island. The water was so rough it was making everyone a little green. We turned around and instead heading back to the resort but stopped along Monkey Beach to see all of 3 monkeys. We did stop at Loo Moh Bee Beach which again was covered in trash. We were so tired at this point and it was barely 12pm. We hung out there for 40 minutes and then headed back to the resort. Upon our arrival I cancelled the second day of snorkeling. The kids really just wanted to spend the next two full days at the pool. I caved on cancelling the Bond Island trip because, hitting the choppy seas to travel 20 miles one way had me worried about my L3 and L4 problem. 

We enjoyed the next two days and of course after we got back from the snorkeling trip, we all took naps and ended up doing room service that evening. our last two days at the resort was pool fun and early morning snorkeling out in the resort Bay. We truly enjoyed this leg of the trip in the end. The staff at the resort was truly friends and I could say  the same for all the people we interacted with in Bangkok and Phuket as well. Heading back to the main land was an experience upon itself. More on that later!