The boat arrived early and with no accomodation booked, we hoped they'd be somone at the pier with a room to spare. There were hundreds there, all with rooms. So we went through the crowd and found a half decent place the other side of the bay over looking Lo Dalam beach. It looked fine in the pictures but was halfway up a mountain in the jungle. It was a bungalow on stillts and was very shaky when moving around - the backpacking had begun!

However, the view was good and it was clean. Phi Phi was badly hit by the tsunami back in 2004. They are still clearing the rubble away but are busy building new shops and hotels. The remembrance garden was right next to our hostel and looked very peaceful and well respected.

Jo had read in our guide that you could walk up to the viewpoint which overlooked the two main bays (Lo Dalam and Ton Sai) but it involved a 45 minute trek though the jungle. So we set out early, checked we were going the right way and started up the hill. The book wasn't lying when it said jungle. Stupid us didn't use any bug spray until we were swarmed by huge mosquitos and recieved numerous bites between us - anyway onwards and upwards, literally. It wasn't great in flip flops but we managed to climb up quickly as we wern't sure what was rustling in the bushes. This is when we came across a new concrete path... 'F**k it'! 50 Meters up the path and we reached the viewpoint, hot, sweaty bitten and angry . The view was worth it though. We went happily back down the mountain, via the PATH!

Later, we got a long boat around the islands (Phi Phi Don & Phi Phi Lay) with various stops, Shark Point, Bamboo Island and Monkey Island. Our last stop was Maya Bay as filmed in 'The Beach'. This was nice and wasn't as unspoilt as we'd thought it might be. We were dissapointed not to see Leonardo but he must have been out fishing. On our way back we saw a group of dolphins which was amazing but they were relucant to be filmed.

We left Phi Phi to embark on a 26 hour bus journey to Singapore. We were so impressed with the Thai people, they were so helpful and could not do enough for us. ByeBye Thailand