Phuket, Koh Phi Phi and the Tsunami

I jumped on an overnight bus to Phuket, after a hair-raising motorbike ride through Bangkok (far more scary than anything in Bali, I had to ride side-saddle and thought I was going to fall off into the traffic the whole way). The bus ride was interesting as well. One good thing about it was that it was cheap, 17 hours on a bus for a fiver, I can't even get from Fleet to Woking for that money back home. The bad thing about the bus was that a couple of hours in, the air-con started to pump out steam into the bus. It was at this point that the girl sitting next to me showed me her guide book, which said that sometimes buses full of tourists are gassed, so the tourists pass out and all their belongings are nicked. On hearing this, the bus erupted with nervous laughter, and it actually improved the atmosphere, as everyone started joking and messing around. The driver couldn't fix the air-con, so decided to turn it off. Even though it was late at night, it was boiling hot and everyone was soaked with sweat, and extremely smelly. This was before he attempted to drive off with half of the passengers outside - a lot of people had gotten off the bus for a fag break, and the bus driver drove about 30 yds down the road before realising 20 people were running after the bus. As awful as all this sounds, it was a great journey, as it seems the worse the conditions of somewhere I go when travelling, the more friendly people are.

I arrived at Phuket, and felt a bit lost as everybody disappeared to their pre-booked accommodation. I spotted an Aussie guy, Dave, looking equally confused, and we decided to join forces and look for a hotel together. We quickly realised we had two main options; stay in a hotel where they filmed 'the Beach' (for those of you who have seen the film will understand why I refused to stay there), or a crappy, expensive hotel. We opted for the latter, and shared a room to halve the costs.

After a shower to get rid of the now caked-in sweat, we went for lunch with another backpacker, Charlotte. Well it was 2pm when we walked into a cafe, and we talked non-stop until we looked at our watches and it was 10pm. I was exhausted with talking! As we were heading back to the hotel we spotted a bar with only two people in it - the barmaid and a guy playing some music. We felt sorry for them and went for a final drink. By this time we were quite pissed and so the three of us decided to turn the place into a karaoke bar. Well the guy had a spare tambourine and a set of bongoes, so it would be rude not to, wouldn't it? It was another unexpectedly great night.

Phuket is a shitty town, so the first thing we did the next day (after the hangover) was to jump on a boat to Koh Phi Phi.

Phi Phi is a stunningly beautiful island, with a lot of scars. It was ravaged by the December Tsunami, half the town was wiped out and 1 in 6 people died. The devastation is still everywhere, rubble and piles of rubbish litter the landscape. The only people there were a few locals and backpackers who were volunteering to clean up the island. No conventional tourists, as there are no posh hotels left, and tour companies are actually discouraging people from coming, even though the island is desperate for tourists to come and spend their money.

For all of the devastation, the island had a really nice atmosphere and I loved it. As I said, it is still beautiful, you just have to look past the piles of rubble. Dave and I helped out with some volunteer work. Dave was helping to rebuild a reservoir. I helped out by snorkeling just off the beach to pick up rubbish and clean the place up. One afternoon I spent digging 'man-made objects' out of the beach. I swear we must have pulled up half a house, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. It was actually quite fun, like digging for buried treasure. Some of the objects we found were quite disturbing, people's shoes and clothes, lots of personal items. I found a toy snowman, and almost burst into tears! I got quite emotional on the island. Whilst we were doing this, I kept meeting people who had been on the island that fateful day, and heard some chilling stories. This all sounds totally depressing, but it wasn't, everyone was keen to get the island back to normal and as I said, it made for a great atmosphere. It was hard work, with crap tools and an obvious void of no government or charity money, it was only the backpackers doing anything. What the island really needs is just for tourists to start returning to it.

Dave's group of workers were really friendly, so we went out with them most nights, drinking (but only til about 10pm when we were exhausted from working). Two of the guys were travelling with a big wooden duck, named Graham. We managed to really piss them off by constantly hiding Graham in more and more ridiculous places for them to find. It was good fun.

I did do a dive on the island, I just had to as it was reputed to be one of the best sites in the world. It was certainly an excellent dive, and I saw my first turtle! It was amazing, I've been wanting to see one for months, and this one was gorgeous, really big. We also saw a leopard shark, which was pretty cool. The whole thing was captured on video by one of the divers, it is an excellent video and I bought it, so I'm sure I'll bore you all to death with it when I get home.