Honeymooners Part III: Island tours

Sorry for the long delay in the honeymoon recaps! I keep finding other things to blog about, plus it's the only wedding-related (sort of) thing I have left, so I'm spinning it out till I get my pro pics...I'm dying here! Anyway.

One thing we really wanted to do while in Phuket was to do an organised tour of some of the islands scattered just off the coast. These are what you see when they show you pictures of Thailand in magazines or on travel shows: rocky cliffs covered in green foliage rising up from the blue-green sea, with white, white beaches dotted here and there. Mmmm, bliss.

We took a motorboat out to the islands. Goodbye Phuket!
I donated my cap to the sea somewhere here. I really didn't see the wind coming. Doh.


Our first stop (and by stop I mean drive-by) was Monkey Beach on Phi Phi Island. Our tour guide wouldn't let us off the boat, but look how beautiful:

And other parties were allowed to go ashore, letting Mr Ruby Slippers prove that humans and monkeys aren't so different after all:
One of the main beaches on Phi Phi:
I'm not at work, yeah baby!
Some nice tourist guy obliged by taking a photo of the still-newlyweds:
It was VERY sunny.

Then we took a little trip around all the bays and coves nearby. Seriously, I could about die from happiness looking at this water:

Look at the FISH! Just swimming around the boat! We did some snorkelling in the deeper water near here, but unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of that. The fish just swim around you; it was absolutely amazing.
Then it was off to Maya Beach, aka "The Beach", where is filmed Hollywood movie The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. (That's what it says on the tour pamphlet).

Now I haven't exactly travelled extensively, but this is the best beach I have ever set foot on:
Pity it's not empty and unspoiled like it is in the movie, but I guess all these other people wanted to see it too.

The view from the beach, of the surrounding cliffs with the gap entrance:
Wow. Just wow.

Trekking away from the beach into the undergrowth:

Goodbye, Maya Beach! If you follow our water trail back you can just see the gap in the cliffs that takes you through to The Beach:
We stopped in the middle of the sea to do some more snorkelling. By this point I was so tired and
sleepy I could just have crawled into bed, but how many times do you get to snorkel in Thailand? Exactly twice! So I pulled on my flippers and jumped in. Again, no pics, but this is the view from the boat where we stopped:


Then off to some more islands! Yeah...there were a lot of islands. So I'll skip to this last one, which I think was called Yao Yai. Basically the entire island is a little forested hill and a beach. And not just any beach...the beach where deckchairs go to die:

There are guys who charge you to sit on their deckchairs. There are also about twenty bars in those little huts at the back, one of which made us an awesome pina colada:
I told you all drinks come in coconuts!

The obligatory ring shot:

By this point the sun was setting, and I was incredibly burnt (despite lathering myself in suncream all day). Mr Ruby Slippers calls this my "Michael Palin" shot:

And as the sun sets over the motorboats, we say a fond farewell to the Phi Phi Island tour....

*sigh*. It's sooo beautiful out there, I could cry.