We walked to the bungalows that Gavin had found on Long Beach and were told they had the cheaper rooms available a few rows back from the beach. I can’t remember the name of the resort but it is towards the left hand end of the beach (not right at the end!!) if you have your back to the land and face the sea. It is a nice spot with trees and Long Beach is definitely beautiful with some of the clearest water on the island for swimming in.

We have stayed in basic accommodation all over Asia this trip and eight years ago. I don’t mind basic but it needs to be clean and safe. It also needs to be priced accordingly and this wasn’t. The rooms were 500 Baht a night (£10) – they were small, dark, damp, mouldy – they had nothing but a bed and so little floor space there was no where to put your stuff (bags). The beds smelt bad and they were uncomfortable, the bathroom was actually quite clean and as it had slits in the walls this allowed some natural light in so you were able to actually see when you needed to use the loo. There was no electricity during the day – just from 6pm to 6am. By this time I was so disheartened by my Phi Phi experience, I did not have the energy or will power to go and look any further for an alternative – there was no ‘machine gun’ at the front desk – that was an improvement. So we checked in and went and got some horribly over priced beer from the shop next door and went to the beach to swim and will ourselves to stop whining and try and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

A short time later we went to the resorts restaurant and ordered food – we all love Pad Thai and have eaten good Thai noodles so many times. They were cold and congealed and when we tried to eat them they tasted of old stinking cooking oil. There have been times when I have held my breath and just not eaten the food or left a situation without complaining when I should have. In the past a few times things have gone a bit wrong when I have said I am not happy about a situation. On this occasion I just felt I’d had enough of having the P taken out of me. So I signalled the waitress and told her that the food was bad, it tasted terrible and that we could not eat it. She looked confused and asked to taste the noodles. Then two more staff came over and had a look – asked what the problem was. I explained ‘cold’ and ‘bad oil’ – they all went and spent several minutes conferring with several other staff and eventually came and took our food away. It was brought back in a slightly improved state, the oil they had used tasted fresh, the noodles were warm – but sadly they were still a bad example of what should have been delicious Thai food. We ate very little paid and left.

We did in fact end up looking for more accommodation that afternoon, we booked ourselves into a very over priced room (3000 Baht about £60) at the other end of the beach and went there the next day. We had to share a family room as that was all they had available – we split the cost which made it easier on the finances. We stayed at the accommodation for three nights. It was a relief – the room was clean and comfortable. We went out a few times and had a fun night over at the town getting drunk and watching the fire dancers at hippies bar.

The resort had promised us that two of their cheaper rooms would be available on the third day – the family room was nice but it was hard having five to a room with no privacy and Oonagh had started to develop a really bad cough and cold. On the third morning we went to the reception area to be told they did not have any of the cheaper rooms but that we could carry on in the huge expensive family room as long as we liked! We went back and packed our stuff and checked out and started the search again.

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{w:600;h:350} Map of Longbeach, Koh Phi Phi Don, Thailand

(Map of Longbeach, Koh PhiPhi,Thailand – a little cloudy)

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