phi phi don

2 major things happened in ko phi phi: something mysterious and extremely bad happened to my back, and we met the most amazing person in the world. ko phi phi is a small relaxed touristy beach bum island, super cute and fun. the first day jessy and i were waiting for our room to be ready by the pool and was on my way back walking from point a to point b when a small twinge started in my lower back. by the time i got to my room it was like crippling pain and i could barely get up from the bed. we called in room massages and by the time that was over i was walking at like a ninety degree angle. so that day jess and i just went to eat at a really good restaurant but had to hobble home right after.

the next day i was feeling kind of better. we went to breakfast and our waiter trainee offered to take us to the viewpoint, which is the highest point in ko phi phi that you hike up to watch the sun set. his name was jai and he offered to be our "tour guide". so we met in front of the hotel at 5:00 and hiked alllll the way to the top, and jai turned out to be the sweetest most genuine person we’ve ever met. he’s in an intern program in phi phi and is studying english to be an immigration officer. he works so hard every day for around 80 baht, which is not even $3. he was so funny and would say totally contradictory things like, i hate cats and love dogs. then would pet all the stray cats and exclaim, I love cats! he also said that he had a really big family, but when we asked how many people were in it he answered, one brother. when we got to the top he asked to borrow jessy’s camera and took like 50 pictures then when he was done told jessy that he hated taking pictures. he also said the best thing: “I am practicing my english, so if I say something wrong feel free to protest me.” we would never protest jai! anyway the viewpoint was super beautiful. on our way back to town a guy hit me with the wheel of his rickshaw and jai was so sad he kept apologizing and was so upset. he was honestly the nicest most selfless person ever. it’s hard to describe how great he is but jess and i are in love with him. he shared his favorite song with us on his mp3 player, which was "you say it best when you say nothing at all." i think that pretty much describes how sweet jai is.

the next day we went diving which was good, there was a lot of beautiful coral and lots of fish but we didn’t see anything exciting like turtles and sharks. on our second dive we went to the manmade reef (since the tsunami totally wiped out a large portion of the coral) which was a big cage-like structure. it was interesting but after floating around it for 10 minutes jess and i were like snoozeville.