Ah Sunday, day of rest. A day of rest and pizza. Well, apart from the couple of hours of work I got in before Julia got up it was a day of rest, but it was started with pizza. And today I did something I haven’t done since I was like 8 years old: I spent the entire day on the beach doing absolutely nothing. Phi Phi’s Loh Dalum beach, to be exact.
And if you’re going to be spending a day of doing absolutely nothing on a beach, what better beach to do it on than on Phi Phi island? It’s not The Beach, but it might as well have been. Idyllic: A strip of soft white sand outlining the bay awash with beautiful, gleaming bodies, clear turquoise waters softly lapping at the sand, gently rocking the moored long-tail boats as it does. Green, tree-covered cliffs rising above the lagoon and dropping down sharply at the mouth in the distance underneath a clear, deep blue sky. Why do people ever leave Phi Phi island?
Of course, my bliss was spent under the shade of a rather big umbrella (for which we paid THB100 for the day) holding what was left of my tube of SPF 50 very close by, reapplying very often. Other people’s beautiful, gleaming bodies soon turned into red lobsters – not so sexy.
Anyway, we chilled, we people watched, we went in the water, had banana shakes, I reapplied my SPF 50 and we repeated the cycle. Several times. At one point we ventured out into the sun to throw around our Ultimate disc like the experts we are, not like the beach bums tossing around those toy frisbees, barely making it fly.
The friendship disc hadn’t been flying long between Julia and myself when a couple asked us where we got the disc, and we said we brought our own, but virtually every shop sells the toy frisbees – we invited them for a game though, but the friendship disc wasn’t warm enough yet. He disappeared for a while and later reappeared with his own shiny new, green, plastic frisbee.
No too long after, 2 Korean boys stopped on the beach and longingly looked at the disc. We waved for them to come in and they couldn’t resist. Han and Jung joined us and over the next couple of hours we taught them how to throw a forehand and a backhand and, dare we say, by the end of it they were pretty good.
Of course, the friendship disc attracted other people – there was Daniel from Germany and Vince from Canada, a league player. It was good. After we were all burned to a crisp (except SPF 50′fied me), we dispersed. I invited Hung and Jung back for the afternoon when the tide would be out and we would have a level area to see if we could get a game going – then Julia and I returned to the shelter of our rented umbrella and the comforting smell of SPF 50.
We spent the rest of the afternoon people watching and banana shake drinking, occasionally going back in the water for a cool down.
As the sun went down Han appeared again and we had a bit of fun on dry, flat land, but we couldn’t get enough interest for a full on game. We said our goodbyes and Julia and I headed back for a rinse before we had a pizza dinner at a restaurant called Cosmic – we actually have to pass along the back of this restaurant where their kitchen is to get to our room, so we’ve been seeing the food they do and have craved it for a while. It was well worth it.
The third quiet night on Phi Phi winded up with yet another walk along Tonsai beach searching for some or other party, but we found nothing and settled for the comfort of banana shakes.
We’re looking forward to tomorrow night when this “quiet time” is over and parties will once again thump on Phi Phi. But tonight, it’s yet another early night.