Only being stranded for just over an hour is relatively good for Asia so we were still in a good mood when we set off again. This time we got as far as the border where we were transferred to minibuses for the rest of the trip to Bangkok. This was OK until, for no reason, the minibus stopped at a petrol station and drove away without telling us anything. Nearly an hour later we were told to get on another minibus (that had been sitting there all along) and we carried on. We finally arrived in Bangkok and the next step was a taxi to the airport, being such a simple task how could this go wrong? Easily. There are two airports in Bangkok and taxi drivers aren't that bright. Still this wasn't the end of the world we had time to kill and he took us to the right airport for no extra charge (once we had told him we wouldn't pay the extra charge). Then was time for the next disaster; the old Bangkok airport is not open 24 hours a day. There are no departures between 10pm and 6am so the airport closes for the night. Awesome if you are arriving at half 10 at night. Luckily one set of doors downstairs was still open so we could get in and sleep in the deserted place until our flight at 7. We even had our own personal security guard who came over and slept nearby!
In the morning the flight went without a problem and from Krabi airport it was just a case of taking a bus, a coach, a tuk tuk and then a ferry and we arrived on Phi Phi... simple as that, and it had only been 36 hours since we left Sihanookville! Things didn't get much easier on the island as we had to spend about an hour sweating our way around until we found a place to stay that wasn't fully booked. This place was a tiny box above a shop with only a double bed, cosy. Our accommodation was also just around the corner from the location pictured below.
Looks like a beautiful, lush, green park... that's because it is the waste disposal area and so the plants are being well fertilised by the island's many tourists (check the "water" under the summer house thing). Unfortunately though the plants hide the visuals they do absolutely nothing for the smell. All in all our accommodation was so bad that moving the next day to a place called The Gypsy Bungalows was a huge upgrade.
The rest of Phi Phi wasn't too interesting really, we took a boat trip to do some snorkelling and to see the beach from The Beach. The snorkelling was quite good fun as the water was crystal clear but the beach that was the main attraction of the day was far too busy to be impressive. The most interesting part of the day was back at our bungalow, a random Thai man rode a push bike into the middle of the green area the bungalows were set around, pulled a chrome handgun and fired a shot straight into the sky. We asked the receptionist what the hell it was about but he just chuckled and ignored us!
On our last day there we realised that we had managed to lose the key during a drunken rampage the previous night involving a child's bike and a fire extinguisher. Anyway our way to avoid the lost key charge was to check out before returning to our room to quickly get changed. We then ran past reception when we were supposed to be giving our key back, a quick check to make sure the gun maniac wasn't following and we were free!
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