We arrive on long beach, said to be the nicest beach of Ko Phi Phi, paradise island. And boy is it pretty, the white sand, the clear turquoise water, the palm trees and the sun shine make me feel like I’m in heaven.
We finally make use of our brought over snorkel gear as long beach has one of the nicest snorkel spots of the island right in front of the beach. You have to be a bit careful not to be run over by a speedboat or long tail boat but when you swim over to the rocks it’s definitely worth it. There are so many different sorts of fish and the colours they have are so vibrant that you see something new every few seconds. My personal favourite is the parrot fish, who I find look a bit like a whale, but then small. And they come in lots of different but always very bright colours. Mainly fluorescent green with blue and purple. Some of them even have different coloured eyes, making them look even more goofy than the other ones. Some of them get quite big as well, 50 cm, and you can hear them eat the coral which is a very funny noise. There are the flat fish as well, who are black and yellow striped and have funky shapes. I think it was the buddy of nemo, who I haven’t seen yet unfortunately as I think they are very sweet. There is all sorts of coral here and anemone like things that close up when you come nearby. The occasional sea eagle keeps us on our guard where to put our feet and the sea cucumbers turned out to move, little did I know that they are actually a sort of fish, a very slow one mind. I have the time of my life exploring the reef and we even spot blowfish Hank the tank, who must have been the ugliest fish on the planet and we saw for the first time in Brazil, where we gave him his name after his robust looks. When we finally get out of the water we decide we indulge ourselves in the only other activity possible here, sunbathing, which in the end results in two crispy lobsters as we forgot that while snorkelling the sunscreen would wash off and result in a bit of a red back, woopsie. We have to wear a t-shirt tomorrow I’m afraid.
As we go out for dinner in the evening we come across to another interesting phenomena; the ladyboy. Graham waves a waitress over as he likes to order a beer and askes the lady in question’ which beers do you have? She seems a bit reluctant to answer but after repeating the question a very low ‘ tiger beer or chang beer’ came back at us. A bit taken a back Graham tells me’ my god that was the grates looking pair of men legs I have ever seen’. And to be fare to him he/she was a very well done one and as long as she didn’t talk you would think her an attractive young Thai girl, maybe a bit tall, but that was all. It’s just the weirdest thing that they have so many ladyboys around and they are accepted by society and have normal jobs like a waitress in a normal restaurant. They have to be taking massive hormone treatments as they look so feminine which can’t be great for them or cheap. What makes it that they have it so much but we don’t, is it that in Europe it’s not accepted but here it is? There is just such a big amount of them here that I can hardly believe that that is the proportion of men who want to be a women in an average society. Interesting phenomena.
