Moonin' Round Asia: Cruisin' For Multiple Bruisins

We awoke Monday morning, the 13^th and decided to finally commit to our booze cruise. There’s 1 sailboat in this island chain, a boat run by a Canadian guy named Bob who’s been on the island for 22 years. We purchased our tickets from a local tourism shop and met for the boat at 1pm. When we got there, it was 4 other girls and Bob’s dad who decided to take his first trip to Phi Phi just a few days ago. His dad is 77, but it became pretty evident that this wouldn’t slow him down.

We took off and can honestly say that I’ve never seen more beautiful landscape in my life. Limestone cliffs shoot straight out of the water, covered in the plushest greenery you’ve ever seen. It’s perfectly quiet except for the waves and Molly’s occasional gas.

Our first stop was at Monkey Beach, which is very much what it sounds like. It’s a small strip of beach protected by a large and sharp coral reef. We made it up to the beach and were given some watermelon by Captain Bob. These little thieves are NOT scared of people. One came running right up to me, snatched my watermelon and then grabbed the bag of fruit Molly had in her hand. I gave him a lecture as he scampered away about littering and being environmentally responsible. It was clear it went in one ear and out the other though and he screamed back and threw the bag right in the sand, like I’d never said anything. Molly pointed out that they’re probably not bilingual and only speak Thai, which I suppose made me feel a bit better. It really made me nervous when all of a sudden about 100 monkeys came down the mountain in front of us, ran across the beach and climbed up the other mountain. I’ve heard in the past that when animals start heading for high ground that you should most certainly follow. But, the largest monkey was bleeding very badly from his jaw, so maybe it was just some sort of monkey battle.

We climbed back onto the boat, having not lost a single person to the thieves, or a rabid monkey bite. Our next stop was cliff jumping. As we arrived, Captain Bob informed us that we’d need to put on shoes to scale the 10 meter volcanic rock. There wasn’t any ladder or anything; you really had to do some climbing. We finally got to the top and were given only one instruction – don’t wave your arms as you’re falling because from nearly 30 feet, you can easily dislocate your shoulder. All of the girls went first and I stayed behind to help coerce the most frightened girl to go. I jumped last and of course didn’t follow any sort of instruction, waving my arms like Peter the Monkey running through the streets. We all escaped unscathed, except for my bruised butt due to my water entry position. On the way to our next destination, Captain Bob told us about the lucrative business on the island of making bird snot soup. Apparently, there’s a species of bird that use only their snot to make each of their 3 annual nesting sites. I guess these disgusting little loogers just sit around couching up nastiness. It eventually hardens into an opaque colored nest and the people of Thailand believe that eating this nest, at roughly $1000 a piece, will help to lengthen your life. This was heavily regulated by the Thai mafia at one point. If they found you trying to poach one of their nests, they’d line you up and machine gun you to death. This stopped a few years back when the Thai Government took over and now posts soldiers on the island to protect the snot. Bet you’d never thought you’d read that sentence somewhere, huh?

After receiving our briefing and clarifying where I may be able to find some snot of my own, we headed out to a huge bay that would have been great for kayaking and snorkeling, only low tide made it very difficult. Molly and I took the kayak and checked out the whole thing, including the hidden coves behind the mountain walls. My hefty rear end proved to be detrimental in trying to get through the shallow bay. A side profile of the kayak would have looked like and gorilla was riding in the back with a good looking spider monkey steering the front. We got back to the boat after about 45 minutes and were informed by Captain Bob that the motor had split the propeller shaft in half and we had to cut the trip short. We’d need to sail all the way home – which shouldn’t have been a big deal, except that there was no wind because we were surrounded by limestone cliffs hundreds of feet tall. No matter though, this was a booze cruise meaning that there’s plenty of beer on board and no one had anything to do anyway.

Molly and I dove in, climbed into the tied up kayaks off the back of the boat and let it pull us almost all of the way home. It took quite a while, but we learned a new game – the snorkel challenge. The snorkel challenge involves putting the mask and snorkel on. Then someone takes a funnel, holds it over your snorkel and pours a 30 ounce beer down the snorkel while you frantically drink. Then, right before finishing the bottle, Captain Bob pulls up the top half of your mask, fills it with beer and you have to clear that out of your mask to finish the challenge. Molly did very good, but that much beer coming down that quickly fills you up very a lot. I now have, and I’m proud to say, a PHD in the snorkel test. I was the only one to be able to finish the challenge and was sure to let Captain Bob’s 77 year old dad hear about it. I don’t think he was impressed with my blatant gloating. Whatever, IN YOUR FACE!!!

We called it an early night after leaving the boat and came home to some rotten pizza in the refrigerator that hasn’t allowed me to leave the toilet today. We’re planning on renting a long tail boat tomorrow to go see the other islands we weren’t able to make it to on the booze cruise. From what we’ve heard, Maya Beach (where they taped the movie “The Beach”) and Bamboo Island are the closest things to paradise that you’ll ever see. There should be some great pictures and hopefully a couple of good stories too. We hope everyone’s well and thanks for hanging in with us and reading.

UPDATE – The Long Tail Boat will have to wait until tomorrow. Molly woke up this morning with what appears to be a fierce sinus infection. We’re going to completely lay low today, enjoy some HBO International (which is about the only English channel we get) and try to get healthy.