What are you even talking about?
A small, road-less, car-less party island in the middle of the Andaman Sea. When most people think about Thai islands, Koh Phi Phi is probably what comes to mind, both in the positive and negative. It’s absolutely gorgeous, very relaxed and carefree, but also overdeveloped and swarming with teenagers fresh off removing the training wheels from their livers.
It’s A Koh Family Thanksgiving, Which Relative is Phi Phi?
The temperamental toddler who is really fun to play with one second and then freaks you out with some juvenile temper tantrum the next. She writes adorable handwritten birthday cards, she gets check plusses on all her school projects, but she won’t eat anything except mac & cheese and chicken nuggets, she’s constantly screaming, and it genuinely feels like she never sleeps.
What Would Your Mother Say?
“Which one was The Beach? Was that the one with the diamonds?”
“What?? I’m sorry it’s too loud, I can’t hear you.”
“Are you sure it’s not pronounced ‘Fee Fee’?”
What They’ll Tell You To Do
Maya Bay: You’ll hear this beach’s claim to fame as filming location for Leo’s Titanic follow up and literal backpacker desert island flick “The Beach” so often on Phi Phi, you’ll forget how terrible the movie was. And yes, Maya really is a must do when on the island. It’s a small cove almost completely enclosed by bulbous green rocks that appear to be floating on the pigment-perfect turquoise below. It’s a showstopper, and seeing it once is to further your education in world class beaches. However, it’s best to think of Maya Bay more as a landmark and photo op than a functional beach. Even if you hire a longboat to get here when the dawn is still intact and avoid Barnum & Bailey’s Packaged Tour Extravaganza, it’s not a beach constructed with all-day lounging in mind. The surrounding mountains can make sunshine a tricky mark to tail across the sand, the unpopulated rock it occupies (only accessible via 15 min boat ride from the area’s main island, Phi Phi Don) means you either have to bring a shitty lunch along or work your beach time around heading back to eat, and the beach is so small that avoiding the inevitable crowd is all but an impossibility. Maya Bay is the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum. It’s not Ipanema or Railay West.
What You Should Actually Do
Captain Bob’s Booze Cruise: This daily Chang-fueled sailing adventure was the highlight of our first visit. Yes it’s a boat ride where you get drunk with a bunch of other travelers surrounded by the most unreal landscape imaginable, but it’s more dive bar on the water than Gronk’s party boat, so don’t let the vibe of other similarly billed excursions, or of Phi Phi in general, dissuade you from probably the most fun way to experience all the island has to offer.
Phi-Leh Bay: While hardly undiscovered, this beach-free lagoon on Phi Phi Leh feels like it came from a different solar system than Maya Bay, which is just a quick drone flight over the staggering limestone walls that seem to close in on you while you’re floating there. We went there during peak hours and were just one of 4 longboats. And we were the only one of those four blasting Vince Staples at top volume.
Would We Go Back?
Tough to say. This was already our second visit, and it didn’t disappoint on round two. But a large part of our desire to return this time stemmed from only being there for 2 nights on the introductory round. Our advice would be to budget 3-ish nights on the island so you don’t feel rushed or the need to come back for unfinished business.
Yo, This Place Lit?
Ridiculously so. And this fact is likely one of the most divisive aspects of the island. Every night the town bloats with blacked out 18-20 somethings hopping from bar to bar before eventually ending on the beach, which, remarkably, is where things actually start to get crazy. The beach starts revving its engines at around 9:00 every night where venues like Slinky and Stones hold marathon session fire shows. Once the last flaming bowling pin is extinguished, each bar becomes a sloppy, sandy, stoned dance party. It doesn’t have the scale or the polish (a word I can’t believe actually applies) of Haad Rin on Koh Phnagan. The vibe here is more rager in your friend’s basement. If your friend’s basement was a flooded sand trap with a DJ living in it.
And consequently, the crowd is young. Where Phangan often feels packed with seasoned studio partiers releasing their long-awaited solo album, Phi Phi is full of wide-eyed New Music Fridays so eager to sign to a major label they’ll likely go bankrupt and end up on a “celebrity” dating show in less than 5 years. Which means they are both less-jaded and less-experienced. It’s more innocent, intimate, and friendly, but also more idiotic, uncoordinated, and likely to ask if you have pizza rolls in your freezer.
Gramworthy?
Absolutely. Most of the photo worthy sites are situated on Phi Phi Leh (home to Maya and Phi Leh mentioned above). Phi Phi Leh is truly breathtaking. Clusters of undulous mega karsts, fused by an erratic connective tissue of razor-thin lizard-spine ridges, advance and retreat with such perceived velocity it’s easy to miss the coveted patches of sand nestled within the limestone labyrinth. It thrusts out of the ocean like a monolith, refusing to adhere to years of ingrained assumptions on how geology is supposed to work. Yet there it is. And it doesn’t possess anything close to a bad angle. Phi Phi Don 
has its sights as well, especially from the viewpoint overlooking the area, but if you’ve seen a shot of Koh Phi Phi, chances are it came from the prettier friend next door.
Seen Some Shit
Phi Phi was one of the places hit hardest by the 2004 Sumatran tsunami, and while it has been reconstructed to the point you wont notice now, it’s pretty mind blowing to sift through YouTube videos and see the lazy sandy walkways you stroll down every day recast as demented torrents of nightmare water throwing speedboats, roofs, and power lines into one another with horrific abandon. There is a memorial garden you can visit on Phi Phi Don.
No Cars Go
Perhaps the aspect of Phi Phi that contributes most to its isolated Lord-of-the-Flies-with-a-speaker-system vibe, is that the island is entirely pedestrian. The main town is nothing more than a maze of sandy alleyways connecting beach bar to surf shop to tattoo parlor, and if you want to get anywhere else you have to hail a boat. The moment other Thai islands approach the same mercurial alchemy of scenery, remoteness, and Never Never Land energy, the squeal of a taxi horn or cough of a tuk tuk engine or flatulence of a motorbike interrupts to remind you the rest of the world exists. On Phi Phi, the only distractions are the ones you came there for.
Stream Of Consciousness:
There are tons of boat tours around the area suiting different travel styles, but maybe the most quintessential mode of exploration is hiring a cheap longboat for the day and creating a tour of your own; Banana Bar is interesting at any time of day; The non-port side of the dock recedes in low tide multiple times a day, which really does a lot to ugly the place up; The misleadingly titled Raggae Bar is famous on the backpacking circuit for holding boxing matches… between its intoxicated clientele. I can’t say how much fun it is to participate, but I can definitely attest to the high entertainment value of being a spectator. If you’re considering vying for the title of Drunkenweight Champion Of The World, consider that inexperience is far from consistent among contenders. You don’t want to end up like the guy we saw who was all jokes until he realized he was up against an amateur kick boxer.
