The Phi Phi Islands largest two islands are Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Ley which is uninhabited.  A national park, Phi Phi Ley has several magnificent bays.  The most renowned of them is Maya Bay where much of "The Beach" was filmed starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  But we will get to that later as well as the East side of Phi Phi Don which is much more sparsely populated than the much more commercial Southern side of the island. 

Let's start with our first hotel at Phi Phi, the Phi Phi Hotel in the first picture below.  It's one of the first things you will see as soon as you get off the ferry at the main pier.  We found it to be reasonably priced and since it's within a hundred meters of the main dock you won't have to carry your luggage very far.  It's close to where all the action is but surprisingly we found it to be very quiet. The free buffet breakfast comes with the room which we found to offer a number of excellent choices. 

Next up was the Relax Resort far on the other side of Phi Phi Don.   I figured we'd either love or hate the place.  It did have excellent reviews on the internet, from which I gathered it would be totally different from all the other Phi Phi hotels I was considering.  We'd have our pick from just one restaurant, the one run by the resort.  To get there we'd have to take a half an hour ride on a long tailed boat which was scheduled to either leave or arrive at the main Phi Phi pier only twice a day.  The other way to get to the main part of Phi Phi or back to Relax would be at least a half an hour arduous hike straight uphill.  We would be practically isolated at Relax.  As if that was not enough, I had read that they turned off the electricity from mid morning until 5 p.m.   I expected something on the order of the island Robinson Crusoe lived on with his sidekick, Friday.  When we got to Relax I found that I wasn't too far off the mark. 

The movie, "The Beach", which was based on Alex Garland's novel, is about an idyllic little island that had the most perfect beach one could imagine.  We would go there the next day and as expected we would find hordes of tourists not only in Maya Bay but in the other bays close by.  But it was here at Relaxed that we found the closest thing to that perfect little idyll Garland wrote about. 

And last, there's the movie itself, "The Beach."  I had to go there.  I have a twenty by thirty inch picture of Maya Bay in my small bedroom.  It's magnificent.  I had been snorkeling in Maya Bay with a previous girlfriend several years ago.  We had gone with Scuba Addicts on their dive boat, while spending a week at Ao Nang during the low season and it had rained every day.  That day we went it had not rained--until we had been out in the dive boat for an hour on our way to our first diving destination.  And then the rain came in very hard.  It was still raining when our boat put into a bay that was surrounded by 90 degree cliffs.  It was still drizzling when the scuba divers went off the side of the boat.  And then the weather broke.  The sun suddenly came out turning the water a dazzling turquoise blue.  The water was clear, our visibility was excellent.  But after snorkeling a few minutes I noticed a very small sand bar.  It was the only thing in the Bay that wasn't perpendicular except the water itself.  Every so often a very small group of people would disappear into the cliff.  I figured there was a trail back there, but after half an hour I had enough snorkeling and wanted to get back to my camera to take pictures.  Our captain was Thai.  It was only after the boat left Maya Bay that my girlfriend told me the captain had told her a movie had been made here.  Although I'd already seen the movie I hadn't put it together that we had gone to the same "idyllic beach" the movie had been filmed.  But there was no beach there.  Had we arrived at high tide and the sand bar was just a small portion of it?  Or did the small trail into the cliff lead to the "Beach" on the other side of the Bay we were snorkeling in?

For nearly three years I wished I had gone to the little sandbar to investigate what now was obviously a trail to other spots the movie had been filmed.  I wouldn't make the same mistake twice, I vowed, so Maya Bay was definitely on the itinerary.  And then I found out I had never been to Maya Bay at all.  I had found Scuba Addicts at Ao Nang Beach, but once we got to Phi Phi Don I discovered that Scuba Addicts now had an office just a couple of hundred meters from the Phi Phi Hotel.  There I met a South African named Keith who gave me the bad news.  My prized picture wasn't of Maya Bay at all. 

One of my prime reasons for coming to Phi Phi in the first place was to rediscover Maya Bay.  This time I was sure Scuba Addicts would take me there.  So I booked a day trip with Scuba Addicts that would take us to Phi Phi Ley, the smaller of the two Phi Phi islands where I'd be sure to explore Maya Bay. 

My girlfriend's not a very strong swimmer who usually contents herself with swimming just one or two laps at our condo swimming pool.   At Railey, when we went out in the Kayak she had worn a life preserver the first day so when she snorkeled across from Pranang Cave Beach she felt very relaxed and comfortable in the water.   The next day turned out differently for her due to the long tailed boat driver forgetting to give her with a life jacket.  She must have panicked a little while snorkeling because she wound up swallowing a fair amount of water.  This would not happen at Phi Phi Ley for two reasons.  There were life preservers on that dive boat and we had not only Keith but Keith's Swedish girlfriend along.  Keith's girlfriend was very patient with all the snorkelers and kept track of everyone's whereabouts at all times. 

The first Bay we put in at was Maya Bay and for a beginning snorkeler such as my girlfriend, this could have been a very intimidating experience for her.  I got Keith to lend me a depth gauge which he cannibalized from one of the boat's oxygen tanks.   My girlfriend, Keith's girlfriend and the rest of the snorkelers all jumped off the dive boat a few minutes after the scuba divers.  Having no idea how deep I was going I held the depth gauge in one hand as I went as deep as I could.  I nearly reached bottom but was distracted by my not having been able to strap the depth gauge on causing me to hand hold it and the painful water pressure driving through my mask.   When I surfaced the depth gauge showed 18 feet.  Later on I practice equalizing the same way a scuba diver does to relieve the pressure from his mask, and was sure I had gone deeper--perhaps even down to 25 feet.  Maya Bay is pretty large and it's surrounded by cliffs as well as being terrifyingly deep for a beginning swimmer or snorkeler.  But none of this seemed to bother my girlfriend at all.  Eventually four or five of us wound up swimming a couple hundred meters to a sand bar which we made into our own private beach.  As far as the Beach in the movie---it was there right in front of us a good quarter mile or so off in the distance but it was covered with tourists looking like so many ant swarming all over an ant hill. 

After about half an hour the boat left us all swimming out in the Bay as it went back to pick up all the scuba divers, then returned to pick all the snorkelers up.  We then had lunch on the dive boat as it motored to its next destination.   This was a second bay, much narrower but even prettier than Maya Bay.   And whereas the water in Maya Bay was a beautiful shade of blue that gave us fifty feet of visibility underwater, the water here was a gorgeous ever changing turqoise composed of varying shades of blues and greens. 

Both bays were filled with boats of all sizes from which snorkelers spilled out into the water from at least half a dozen boats.  As far as the beach itself at Maya Bay from the movie that starred Leonardo DiCaprio, it had so many tourists crawling all over it that it held no allure for us whatsoever.  But crowded or not, the bays and lagoons at Phi Phi Ley are utterly gorgeous with some of the clearest water you will ever snorkel in.

The Third Side of Phi Phi where the people aren't

Meanwhile we had already found "our beach" the previous day at Relaxed Resort.  Here the whole setting is so rustic, so Robinson Cruesowish.  Although there's only one restaurant, it's a good one and it's right down on the beach.  The bungalows are up a short steep little trail up the hillside.  Ours was around twenty-five feet above the beach.  The bungalows are on stilts and are set back into the jungle.  The woman in charge of the resort knew our names straight off.  We found the staff to be on the ball and eager to make sure we got what we needed. 

One of the best things about the Relaxed Resort is the excellent snorkeling which is  right out in front of the restaurant.  Here one doesn't even need to hire out a boat to get you to where all the fish, coral and other sea creatures are.  Our bungalow had a sleeping porch where thin mattresses had been laid out for us.   My girlfriend and I had brought our books out there and while reading them we wound up passing out for an hour or two.  This is the kind of stuff you will only find in books or see in the movies.  But here we found what Alex Garland must have been trying to convey when he wrote, "The Beach." 

We found Relaxed Resort to be such a contrast from the rest of Phi Phi which had been well trodden down by all the tourists and full of travel agencies, tour boat operators, restaurants, hotels, family marts, Seven Elevens and bars.   Over there on the other side of the big hill everyone seemed to be chasing all over themselves looking for something they'd never find simply because they were all too busy holding hands playing follow the leader.  And yet, here it was, only a half hour away with no air conditioning and where they'd be turning off the power on us until late afternoon and where we were so inconveniently away from practically everything else.  Perhaps it was those one or two reviews that put all the hordes off which mentioned ants had been discovered in the rooms. Well thank God for all the ants.  I've got them in my condo too and once in awhile I'll actually see them. 

That outdoor sleeping porch still beckons and the fact the power will probably be out when I'm using it the next time I visit doesn't bother me at all.  There will be lots of sunlight.  I'll have my books with me.   And my girlfriend in my arms.  And if I have any work to do on my laptop by the time my battery is out of juice it will be time to head out into the water to do a little snorkeling or to hike about chasing after monkeys and when it's all said and done by late afternoon the power will be back on anyway. 

We wound up getting a reservation for our last night on Phi Phi Don at a place about half a mile over to the left after you are getting off the main pier.  The beach over there wasn't bad but the place was run by Muslims and they didn't have any beer.   Our bungalows looked inviting enough from the outside but that night we could hear music from a long way off.