...part 2

here is the continuation of my description of our trip. Unfortunately, I am sick in bed with a fever and chills, so my apologies if this entry is a little less upbeat than my last one.

So as I said, we found a beautiful hotel room even closer to the pier with a view of the ocean and right next to the pool. We stayed there for two nights. After settling our stuff in and taking a brief swim in the pool, we decided to go on a little hike to explore the island. We had asked several people about hiking trails (people in the dive shops, etc) and they all claimed that none existed. Mike's guidebook said they did, but we soon realized that his book was pre-tsunami. The tsunami really devestated Koh Phi Phi, but now, a little over 2 years later, you can hardly tell that there was any damage except for the huge amounts of construction around the pier. But, we decided to go for it, trails or not, and I'm so glad we did. We walked along the beach for a while, maneuvering through huge boulders. Eventually we decided to go inland, and did some nice walking through the woods, stumbling upon many tiny bungalow places with private beaches. That was more the sort of thing I was expecting when we came to Koh Phi Phi, but unless you really know how to find those places, it would be sort of impossible. Also...our one huge rolling suitcase wouldn't have been well suited to that hike.

Anyway, we got to one part of the path that we were on that was surrounded by trees. We both mentioned that we were on the lookout for monkeys in the trees, but hadn't seen any up to that point. However, it was our lucky day. Not long after saying 'i want to see a monkey,' we looked up and saw a whole family of monkeys in a tree not far from where we were standing on the path. I took a few pictures from afar, but Mike was more brave than I and climbed up the side of the hill off the path to get a closer look. One of the monkeys threw a piece of fruit at him, and at one point a big one was crouching not far from Mike and growling at him. I kept having visions in my head of those tv shows "when animals attack." Thankfully, nothing like that happened and we continued happily on our way, overjoyed at seeing monkeys in their natural habitat. After stopping for a refreshment at one of the bungalow places, we decided to head back to the beach to watch the sunset, which was beautiful (aww). After that, we took a long boat back to our part of the island, wandered around through the shops and restaurants, and I ended up talking Mike into going to one of the million massage places. He opted for a foot massage, while I opted for the traditional Thai massage. I liked some of the stuff the lady did that stretched out my leg muscles, but overall I wasn't really that into the Thai massage. Mike was even less impressed with the foot massage when the guy proceeded to spend half an hour scraping and filing off his caluses. So much for walking barefoot.

Our last day on Koh Phi Phi was even better. We got up and went for another hike, this time choosing to go to the viewpoint on the island. It was quite the hike, but well worth the 9 billion steps we had to climb. When we got to the top (we actually went to 3 view points, all of which offered a slightly different view), we had incredible views of the narrow part of the island that was the most severely damaged during the tsunami. At one of the view points, the guy who ran the little souvenir and refreshment shop had a book all about the tsunami, where we were able to see how much the island has changed since then. It was really fascinating. I really loved the hikes we took because it's not something I get to do that often, living in Shanghai. The closest thing to is is the Taiping hashes that I go on with my friends, but I've only been to 2 (and i'm going to my 3rd this saturday, provided that i'm healthy). The change of scenery from a filthy, smoggy city to tropical paradise was just what i needed.

After our hike and lunch on the beach, we decided that it was time to explore one thing that had really interested us about Koh Phi Phi-- monkey beach. I had read a little bit about it, but still didn't really know what to expect. Would there actually be monkeys there? Would it be a big disappointment? Needless to say, we were excited about the idea of feeding monkeys and decided to hire a long tail boat just for the two of us. Our driver was nice, and the boat ride over (which took about 25 minutes) was spectacular. The cliffs of Koh Phi Phi are really breathtaking, and the whole time we were there I felt like it was all a dream. When we arrived on Monkey beach, we were a little disappointed that there were so many other tourists, but pleasantly surprised that there were, in fact, monkeys. the beach itself was beautiful, with really soft, white sand. We decided to buy some bananas, which the monkeys gladly grabbed out of our hands and peeled themselves. Other tourists gave them coconuts, bags of watermelon seeds (which they opened themselves, and then cracked the seeds to eat what was inside), and other various types of fruit and candy that needed to be unwrapped. Unsurprisingly, these monkeys are obese. It's really actually pretty sad, because they just eat and eat all day long. But...that doesn't mean we fed them any fewer bananas.

Our taxi boat driver had told us that there were actually 2 monkey beaches, and that the other one was far less crowded. We bought some more bananas and asked him if he would take us there. He told us that it was low tide, and that he wouldn't be able to get the boat onto the beach, but that if we wanted to swim in to the beach from the boat, he would do that. So, when we got close enough, Mike was the first one to jump in the water. Our driver told us that we had to be very careful because there was so much coral (most of which was VERY sharp) and to wear our flip flops while we were swimming so that we could walk on the rocks when we got close enough. Sadly, Mike couldn't see what he was jumping into when he got into the water, and ended up cutting his foot up pretty badly on some coral. However, he was determined to get to the beach, and with a bunch of bananas in his mouth, he swam ashore. I followed suit, managing to steer clear of the sharp coral. When we got to the beach, we were greeted by a lot more monkeys than at the last beach, and these ones were a normal weight. Apparently not as many people come to this beach to feed the monkeys, and they were acting like they were starved. Mike and I fed them more bananas, but these ones were also a little more aggressive, as one actually jumped up on Mike's leg to grab a banana out of his hand. I couldn't believe it. Two other monkeys seemed a little upset with me that i didn't have any more food for them, and ran around my legs, scaring the hell out of me. Once out bananas were gone, we made the slow walking/swimming journey back to the boat, feeling like we had finally accomplished everything that we had wanted to on our vacation.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, and we left on the 9am ferry to go back to Phuket the next morning. Our last day of vacation didn't really feel much like vacation at all...we had like 6 hours in Phuket until we had to go to the airport, so we pretty much just ate lunch and went and hung out in an air-conditioned coffee shop for a while. We had timed it so that our flight from Phuket to Bangkok would only leave us with a few hours at the Bangkok airport before our flight back to Shanghai, and it worked out really nicely. Our flight left Bangkok at 1:30am, and it turned out that our flight was only half full, so we ended up with several seats to ourselves. Arriving back in Shanghai was uneventful, and the last few days of Mike's visit involved mostly sleeping and relaxing and a little bit of eating and drinking. The most touristy thing we did was go to the bar on the 87th floor of the Jin Mao tower for drinks and appetizers, which was really romantic and really fun.

Needless to say, it was hard to say goodbye. I can't believe i've already been in China for 6 months, and sometimes another 4 months seems like nothing...but saying goodbye at the airport always makes even hours or days seem like forever, let alone another 4 months. The semester has gotten off to a decent start so far, minus the fact that I'm sick in bed right now...I just hope i can strike a good balance of enjoying my time here while being excited about coming home and starting law school and my 'real' life.