September 7th, 2007 at 02:03am
Under Travel+ Thailand
Nestled in the balmy waters of Andaman Sea on the Indian Ocean, Phuket is the largest island in Thailand. Located approximately 867 km south of Bangkok, Phuket is one of the magnificent tourist destinations in the world, with its amazing coves and bays, palm-fringed beaches, gleaming island-dotted seas, superb accommodation and dining facilities, stunning turn of the century architecture, and lush tropical landscape.
Phuket Cultural Center, Butterfly Garden and Sea Aquarium, Phuket Sea Shell Museum, Chana Charoen Crocodile Farm, Phuket Orchid Garden and Thai village, Khao Rang, and Ko Si Re, are just few among many of its interesting attractions.
Phuket also boasts of some excellent wildlife attractions, such as Sirinat National Park and Khao Phra Thaeo Wildlife Sanctuary. In addition, Phuket serves as a venue for a range of gastronomic festivals such as Seafood Festival and Vegetarian Festival. Also, worth mentioning is Phuket’s shopping and nightlife experiences.
Perhaps one of the […]
Original post by WJaegel For All Your Travel Needs Best Travel Rates Online
By admin
July 3rd, 2007 at 08:24pm
Under Thailand
Koh Phi Phi is one of the nicest places I came across traveling, I arrived a few weeks after the tsunami and to be honest the people of Koh Phi Phi had done a fantastic job of clearing up the debris. It was quite heart breaking as people were still diving around the shores looking for bodies and cleaning up the debris which was scattered out to sea.
Even though the island was now clean and safe there was very few tourists here, I would have said that there was about 50 of us. Which for an island which has around 2000 rooms was of great concerns for the locals. It was heartbreaking to be watching CNN and BBC news on the island which was reasonably immaculate considering what had recently happened, yet rather than the news channels broadcast how well the locals and tourists had cleaned up and got pretty much all of the coastal towns, villages and islands up and running again. The news channels were still telling people to stay away and were showing video clips from weeks previous. No wonder people didn’t want to go! I suppose do you show bad footage to get people to donate and help get relief work undertaken quicker or do you say that Koh Phi Phi etc is back up and running fine and people then don’t donate? Well personally I would have done the second and at least allow the locals to get their pride back and line their pockets themselves.
Around this time my girlfriend and family were extremely worried around me as the island had no connections with the outside world, well ones I could use. No telephones and of course no internet, this was still an issue even after I left the island and arrived in Krabi about 42km away by boat and of course for around the 3 weeks I had no contact with anyone. In hindsight I now realise for the sake of £30-40 I should have gone on a day trip to the mainland and contacted home and explained the situation rather than going AWOL.
Anyway Koh Phi Phi is just under 50km south east of Phuket and about a 2 hour boat journey to Krabi, with boats leaving on a daily basis. The islands are extremely rugged and have steep barely vegetated cliffs, which is great as it are tehes which make the secret little hidden bays which are hiding the amazing pristine beaches. Scuba diving in Koh Phi Phi was amazing with visibility of around 30 meters whilst I was here, unfortunately the marine life here was pretty scarce from the majority of the coral being destroyed.
The Phi Phi islands are situated in the province of Krabi which is one of the furthest south which sits next to the Andaman Sea, Eastern Indian Ocean. The biggest island is Phi Phi Don which is about 8 x 2.5 km and is in the shape of an H. The smaller island is Phi Phi Ley which is about 3.5 x 1 km and in uninhabited of course except for the Viking Cave bird nests which are guarded by 2-3 people to protect the caves. This island is made entirely of limestone cliffs and has two of the world’s most famous beaches Loh Samah and of course Maya Bay. This was where “The Beach” was filmed, there was a lot of bad publicity over the film being shot here. But if you speak to any of the locals the actually film company left the beach in better condition than when they arrived. Typically lots of tourists had left rubbish all over the island which was all cleaned up by the film company. They even went as far as to plant a few extra trees and bushes which were native to the island. The other islands are Bamboo island and Mosquito Island which are both tiny.
By admin
