Our destination was Ko Phi Phi (pronounced Ko Pee Pee), a small island in the Andaman Sea off the west coast of Thailand. We caught an early morning flight from Chiang Mai to Phuket. Phuket is a large island with a reputation for being over-developed, but as our plane circled for landing all I saw was swaying palm trees, jungle, and sandy beaches. It looked pretty nice to me.

Now, thousands of people arrive each day at Phuket Airport. Flights come in from all over Thailand as well as neighboring countries. This is one of the busiest airports in Thailand. Of the thousands of people who arrive some stay on Phuket itself, but many travel on to surrounding islands like Ko Phi Phi (PP), the most popular of the nearby islands. And this was peak tourism season, so flights were at capacity and the airport was buzzing.

With these facts in mind, one might assume that local tourist authorities -- the same authorities who have done a pretty good job of turning Phuket into a major modern international resort -- would have developed an infrastructure to move those hundreds of incoming passengers to their respective destinations. This seems to be a reasonable, common sense assumption, and in fact our travel agent in Bangkok had assured us that a minivan would whisk us across Phuket island to a waiting ferry that would take us the rest of the way to PP.

Our first impression that something wasn't quite right came when we were approached by drivers trying to sell us rides. When we told them we were heading for PP they exchanged startled and confused looks with each other, as if this were some strange and shocking revelation. I'd seem this same look in the eyes of a stunningly inefficient Vietnamese border guard, and it made me worried. Eventually one the drivers said "no problem" and we piled into his taxi.

Doubtless, avid readers of these dispatches know what happens next. Notice the clues. Words like "assume," "no problem," "common sense," "reasonable" -- these are all red flags when travelling in Asia.

As soon as we pulled away our driver told us that there were no more ferries to PP. He said that the last one had already left for the day. On his cell phone, he called a local travel agent who confirmed this and then cheerfully offered to book us hotel rooms on Phuket for the night (no doubt with a healthy commission for herself and our driver). We told him we were sure there was a ferry and would he please take us to the ferry dock. He protested, but then gave up and instead vented his anger at us by driving really, really slowly.

Once we neared the other end of the island he turned on to a side road and came to a stop in front of a travel office where he again tried to get us to book a hotel room. Again we told him to take us to the ferry terminal, and he refused until we threatened to call the tourist police. He finally shut up, but he took the most circuitous, twisted, slowest possible route. I think that last stretch of 1 kilometer took 20 minutes.

When we arrived at the dock it was silent and empty. No crowds of people. No ferries. We looked around for a while and came across an older German couple arguing with a local Thai guy sitting behind a desk. They wanted to get to PP, and this guy was trying to sell them a ride on a speedboat for 12,000 Baht ($300). We joined in the negotiations, and the guy behind the desk prompty launched into a whole story about how they would have to send a special boat from PP and it would have to drive all the way here just to pick us up and this was extremely expensive and unusual and boy were we lucky here was there to arrange all this for only 12,000 Baht. We went back and forth and when he offered 8,000 Baht the German couple agreed. This was still robbery, but without them we couldn't negotiate lower, and we just wanted to get to PP, so we accepted. We sat down to wait for our special boat which no doubt was being dispatched specifically for our benefit from the island one hour away.

Five minutes later a boat pulled up and the guy behind the desk motioned for us to board. One of the large private resorts on the island had a private speedboat to shuttle its guests back and forth, and the whole time we were negotiating the boat was already on its way, dropping off guests who had been vacationing on PP. It had to return to the island with or without us, and our 8,000 Baht was going to make a nice little bonus.

We tried not to let it bother us as we headed out. Almost immediately we could see PP ahead of us, 2 dark bumps on the horizon. We were in a large speedboat (thankfully of western, not Laotian, design). Although we travelled fast, PP never seemed to get any larger or closer. The sky was cloudy, but the air was hot, and we enjoyed looking out over the open water at the distant cliffy islands. After 45 minutes, PP finally got closer and at this point the ride got rougher. The wind had picked up. It was driving swells 15 or 20 feet tall (actually, they were only 4 or 5 feet tall, but Karna, Mike, and Sarah all agreed they'd back up my story if I beefed things up a bit for dramatic effect). We were soaking wet and rattled to the core from the pounding of our boat.

As we pulled up to PP, none of that mattered. It was absolutely gorgeous. We saw that PP was actually two separate islands. On our right was the smaller, uninhabited Phi Phi Leh which was encircled in towering cliffs and punctured with narrow curving bays. On our left was the main island, Phi Phi Don, which was shaped like a large capital "H". The vertical lines of the "H" were mountanous and uninhabited, and the horizontal "--" was a low, palm covered section just a few hundred yards wide with beach on each side and hotels and shops across the middle.

In true tropical island fashion we jumped off the boat and waded ashore. On our short walk to our hotel we surveyed our surroundings with mixed feelings. The landscape was spectacular. From where we stood smack-dab in the middle of the H we could look south to a beautiful beach-lined bay or north to a beautiful beach-lined bay. Each bay was walled in jungle and cliff. The water was crystal emerald green, then deep blue furhter out. As the ground rose the air grew lighter, and ascending the long slopes a path wound across a meadow; then dipped into a lane plumed with asters and purpling sprays of bramble, whence, through the light quiver of ash-leaves the country unrolled itself in pastoral distances.

Oops. Been reading too much Edith Wharton.

Unfortunately this beauty was tempered by the ramshackle development that had gone unchecked across the narrow isthmus. There were a few large resorts, but most of the land was packed tight with twisty alleys of metal-sided huts: restaurants, t-shirt shops, scuba centers, bars. The buildings were just barely one step better than street stalls. Most had tin roofs and plastic tarps to fight back the sun and rain. They were so closely packed together you couldn't see past them to the beautiful surroundings. The big resorts, which are often accused of being the very symbols of over-development, were actually the nicest part of this area of the island. At least they incorporate gardens and open space.

Still, it was a beautiful couple of days in a beautiful place. We spent most of our time on a beach called Long Beach that was a short 10 minute boat ride away from the commercial center of the island. Long beach is a sleepier, quieter place with 2 restaurants, a few rustic bungalows, and of course, a nice long sandy beach. It also had great snorkeling over coral reefs just offshore, and we thoroughly crisped our backs floating in the clear warm water.

One of the dive shops on the beach had a "try scuba free" sign up, so Mike and Sarah gave it a go. An instructor suited them up and then after a few practice breaths they swam a quick loop in about 15 feet of water. It was great way for them to get a feel for scuba, and they both enjoyed it. Mike enjoyed it enough to try it again, so we booked a scuba trip for the next day. Mike and I would dive, and Karna and Sarah would snorkel. I hadn't dove in about 6 years, and this would be Mike's first dive, but since we would be doing shallow dives (40-45 feet) and since scuba diving is just barely more complex than sitting on a couch watching a video of scuba diving it would be fairly safe.

The four of us, our dive master, and our driver boarded a longtail the next morning and headed off to Phi Phi Leh, the cliffy island just to the south of Phi Phi Don, where we were staying. Our dives were pretty good. Visibility was about 60 feet and since we were relatively shallow we could stay down for almost an hour at a time. The dives were nice, but the real star of the day was the island, and the beaches and bays we saw there.

About a year ago, an amazingly bad movie called The Beach was released in the States. The movie was really, really bad, but it got a lot of press because it happened to be Leonardo DiCaprio's first movie since his mega-hit Titanic, and with his new found super-stardom he caused quite a ruckus while they were filming in southern Thailand. The premise of the movie is that jaded traveler Leonardo goes in search of the perfect unspoiled island paradise and finds it on a hidden beach that sits on a lagoon surrounded on all sides by cliffs. Sarah and I were hungry for glimpses of our upcoming trip, so went to see the movie last December (1999). The scenery was so gorgeous that it almost (almost) overcame the bad script. It was that pretty.

Well, we didn't find out until just recently, but it turns out they filmed The Beach here on Phi Phi Leh and our first dive of the day was in that hidden lagoon. We ate lunch on the actual beach. In real life the lagoon is not complety circled by cliffs, there is a small opening to the sea that was digitally closed with special effects, but otherwise it looked strangely familiar. The other 10 boats full of snorkelers and divers and siteseers kind of shattered that whole "remote and undiscovered" thing, but it was still pretty. We ate our lunch, took our requisite photos, my white belly glistening in the bright sun, and then boarded our boat for our afternoon dive.

No paradise is complete, of course, without massive gluttony and we have excelled on that front as well. Local restaurants lay out huge displays of fresh fish. We just point to what we want and they grill it right up. A typical dinner might be a whole snapper, 6 large shrimp, and a whole crab. That's for one person. We embarrassed ourselves, gladly, by each ordering whole platters of seafood that on neighboring tables were being shared amongst 2 or 3 people. Cost? Maybe $4 a person, $5 if we really went crazy.