(Unlike my trips to the island in 2014 and 2015, I made a point of taking a lot of photos and videos this time around, so get ready for a lot of media content in this post.)

On Christmas day, after one last banh mi and iced coffee at the Saigon airport, I flew to Bangkok, where I met Nock for our flight. The next 24 hours were pretty standard for a trip to Koh Phi-Phi: a short flight to Krabi, a guesthouse for the night (since all the boats to the island leave early in the day), dinner at the night market, massages before bed, a lazy breakfast the next morning, a van ride to the semi-chaotic and tourist-packed pier, a relatively sedate two-hour ferry ride to the island, and a 10-minute walk from the pier to our hotel. There are no motorized vehicles on the island – which is always heaven on earth whenever you can find that in Southeast Asia – so the porters and other workers transport everything via hand-pushed carts.

We stayed at a hotel that I’ve stayed in before, so the walk from the pier was very familiar. There had – unsurprisingly – been a fair amount of development in the two years since I was last on the island. A nice paved walkway connects the two main beaches now, but the main corner by the pier has a fucking McDonald’s, which is infuriating. You can’t stop “progress”, I guess.

Before dinner, while Nock had to work a bit on her laptop, I took my camera down to the beach to get some photos of Koh Phi-Phi’s famous long-tail boats. Some of the tour guides will hang around Ao Lo Dalam in the late afternoon in the hopes of enticing tourists to book a sunset trip. A few guys were hawking on the beach, a few were lounging in their boats, and a few Thai children splashed around in the water nearby.

Our first full day on the island was a deep dive into the beach vacation we both were craving: lazy time on the beach to lounge and read and people-watch, swimming, some light reading, and Thai food for lunch and Italian food for dinner. I hit “peak vacation” in the mid-afternoon when I passed out in my chair – clearly exhausted from all the lounging and eating – and broke my cheap sunglasses.

The next day, we woke up early to catch the sunrise, then took a long-tail boat to Haad Yao, a beautiful beach on the southeast part of the island. It was honestly the best beach day I’ve had in a long time: powdery sand, perfectly hot weather, cool spots in the shade, fresh coconuts, an incredible lunch of massaman curry and stir-fried fish, and clear, warm water that was so salty you could effortlessly float away if you wanted to.

On our final full day, we had a fantastic brunch at an all-mangoes-all-the-time restaurant in town, followed by another lazy afternoon on the beach closest to our guesthouse.

In the evening, we asked around about boat trips and decided to hire one for a few hours to go sightseeing on Koh Phi-Phi Leh, the beautiful sister island to the south that is open for tours but has no inhabitants. Even though this was my third time on Koh Phi-Phi Don, I had never actually gone to the other island on my previous trips and I decided it was time to correct that.

We puttered around the island, mostly visiting the two large bays: Pileh Lagoon and the world-famous Maya Bay. We stopped frequently to take photos or go swimming next to the cliffs or kick around small, deserted beaches. We cruised by Maya Beach – best known as the shooting location of The Beach – but didn’t stop since it was already packed with tourists (and actually costs money for foreigners). Instead we found another deserted beach with palm trees and towering limestone cliffs and beautiful turquoise water.

As I floated in the water and looked at the tops of the karsts against the deep blue sky, I strained to fully absorb the stunning scenery. The nearby party boat blasting 90’s hip-hop brought me back down to earth occasionally, but mostly I felt like I was gently floating away in a dream.

Just as the sun was setting and the moon was starting to come out, we left the southern island and made our way back. The scenery for the entire evening was incredible and that boat trip was the perfect way to finish our trip to the islands.

That evening, we stopped by the massive nightly beach party for a bit to watch all the dancing backpackers and ridiculous fire poi antics. Our flight back to Bangkok wasn’t until 5:00 the next day, so we happily slept in and had a lazy lunch before our boat ride and transfer to the airport.

Even though the island has seen more and more development in recent years and one has to wonder if there’s a breaking point, Koh Phi-Phi is still the most beautiful island I’ve ever been on. I will always happily go back, especially if I can take along friends to see it for the first time.

Before returning to Chiang Mai to finish my work for Bebee, I decided to take a quick holiday in southern Thailand, namely Krabi and Koh Lanta. Krabi is a smaller, fairly authentic Thai city that largely serves as a gateway for tourists to some of the southern islands. Due to the timing of my flights and the ferry schedule, I had to stay a night on the mainland before heading out to the island of Koh Lanta.

Krabi was entirely pleasant, though it’s not much of a tourist destination by itself since it doesn’t have a beach. I walked around a bit in the evening after my flight landed and had a pretty typical dinner-bars-massage night. The food stalls by the water were a pretty good deal; for the same cost as a Subway sandwich and a bottle of water in the airport (my only real lunch option earlier that day in a sea of Thai-less fast food), I treated myself to huge portions of rice and veggies and about five beers.

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Without realizing it (mainly because my book-reading rate had dropped off in recent months), I had fallen into a pattern of reading books that in some way mirrored my travel life. I read Asimov’s Nightfall – a short story (and later, book) whose plot revolves around the absence of sunlight – over the course of many starry nights on my balcony in Bali. I read The Lunatic Express – a travel writer’s account of intentionally taking the world’s most dangerous conveyances – during the time I was taking planes, ferries, motorbikes, and even a powered parachute in a part of the world not known for its safety record. And on my last full day in Cambodia, I was approached by a street person while I was eating lunch outside. He had only stubs for arms – clearly the victim of a landmine – and was selling illegal photocopies of books so he could make some money for himself. After I told him I was backpacking and didn’t have room for paper books, he grabbed one with his stubs, set it on the table next to me, and said “Well this one is pretty small.” After having a good laugh, I bought the book (First They Killed My Father, one of the most well-known pieces about the Cambodian genocide) and finished it within 24 hours, unable to put it down.

In keeping with this tradition, I read The Beach while traveling to Krabi and the islands. Yeah yeah, I know it’s incredibly cliche, you don’t have to tell me. I had seen the movie many years ago but was really impressed with how good the book was (and how dark it was in places). Traveling internationally for a little while, especially in Thailand, gave me a new appreciation for the story and I can definitely say that it’s the best work of fiction I’ve read in a long time. After I finished, I downloaded the movie and tried to watch it, but I had to shut it off after about 30 minutes because it was such an awful, Hollywood-esque interpretation. Do yourself a favor and read the book the next time you want a really great literary escape.

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With the fantastical story and setting of The Beach in mind, I very much enjoyed my voyage to and short holiday on Koh Lanta. In some ways, it was the best Thai island I’ve been to, though I’ve still yet to find that perfect postcard-worthy beach. That said, the sand was nice (though a bit rocky in places), the water was blue and warm, and the evenings on the sunset side of the island were perfect. A lot of the beach bars light bonfires on the beach every night, attracting tourists (and farang locals) who lazily make their way to hammocks and lounge chairs and enjoy some drinks or some greenery (if you know what I mean), both of which are available for purchase from the bar. As the sun sets, the air stays warm and the most pressing thoughts of the evening are about stargazing or dinner.

Chiang Mai

Before long though, I had to snap out of my island reverie and make my way back north to Chiang Mai to finish my work. As I landed at the airport and got a ride from a friend into town, I was greeted by a smoky haze covering the city and a fireball sun in the sky, consequences of the fires set by farmers as they burn their fields every March. Luckily I missed the worst of it and after a few rainstorms, the air felt clean(er).

Once I settled back into my same guesthouse and reconnected with my friends in town, I was back to finishing up all my work for Bebee. With only a day to spare before my passport stamp expired, I delivered two PDF cookbooks, a simple online store, and various improvements to the website, TripAdvisor page, and Facebook page. Overall I feel really good about all my IT work, mainly because I could help my friend in a significant way, but also because it helped me stay sharp mentally and learn some new skills that I feel proud enough to put on my resume.

Somewhere in the middle of my work schedule, my friend Roseanne, who I met though Friends For Asia, came back to Chiang Mai after some travel so she could spend a week at a Burmese Buddhist temple. During her time there, she invited me to come to the temple to witness a shinbyu, a traditional ceremony celebrating the boys that are about to start their Buddhist education. The boys – always under the age of 20, but often much younger – wear traditional outfits and makeup (making them look more like little girls) and ride on the shoulders of Burmese men who make music and dance and thrash around. One of the men convinced me to try some kwun-ya, a popular chewing habit among Burmese (both men and women) consisting mainly of betel leaf, areca nut, and tobacco. I wasn’t too crazy about it though. I like my teeth white!

A major reason I went back to Chiang Mai was for Songkran (Thai New Years). There are parades and traditional outfits and music and visits to the temples to pray for good luck in the coming year, but the main reason to celebrate Songkran is for the massive water fight that rages over four days all over the country. Throwing water on others symbolizes washing away all the bad away in preparation for the new year. In more practical terms, it’s one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life. For four days, farang and Thais alike roam the streets, either on foot or in the backs of pickup trucks, armed with massive water guns, backpacks of water, or even just buckets (my personal favorite). It’s also very common to load huge ice blocks into 55-gallon drums of water, creating a supply of freezing ammunition. When you see a bucket of water flying at your face, you hope that it’s warm, but deep down inside, you know you’re about to get hit with ice water. On the plus side, you don’t notice the 90+ degree temperature outside!

I met up with different groups of friends on the different days; when I wasn’t with them, I was happy to wander down to the moat, join up with some Thais, and throw water on whoever was driving by. It’s funny that Songkran is a purification ceremony and yet many people in Chiang Mai use water from the moat, which is pretty filthy. I had heard stories of people getting eye infections; sure enough, a day or two after Songkran was over, I developed an ear infection. Apparently the cure (in adults) is to just let it heal itself, which it finally did after several semi-painful days. Still totally worth it.

Clearly I didn’t bring my camera out for any of these festivities, as I’ve noticed that electronics work their best when they’re not sopping wet. But this montage sums up the holiday pretty well:

With Songkran over and my work for Bebee finished, I sadly packed up my things, said goodbye to my friends, and boarded a flight for Hong Kong. I was re-entering the first world; this would be the beginning of the end of my travels, but I had learned a few days before that I wouldn’t be finishing this trip alone…