Backpacking is hard work so we decided we needed a break. Thanks to the fact that Pearse travels a lot for work and is an expert at playing the frequent flyer/hotel points game, we were able to stay at the Holiday Inn Resort on Phi Phi Island without breaking the budget. Phi Phi Island was one of the places we visited on our last trip to Thailand (2001) and we were determined to return to it. Unfortunately, the main town in PP was heavily damaged by the tsunami but we were happy to learn that the HI Resort was fully functioning and there were boats going from Phuket to PP. We arranged for a ride on a snorkel tour boat which dropped off about 20 snorkelers at Maya Bay (site of the movie "The Beach" of Dicaprio fame). A further 10 tourists got off at Tonsai Bay (the main town) and the boat continued around the island to Laemtong Beach, where the Holiday Inn crew met us and loaded the 8 guests onto a longtail boat to the hotel. A separate boat was dispatched for our luggage.

Immediately upon docking in front of the hotel we knew we were in a special place. The staff met us with ice cold towels (have I mentioned how hot it is down south?), fruity cocktails and an individual receptionist devoted to each group. Our bungalow turned out to have a seaview (usually HI sticks its freeloading awards guests way in the back in the least desirable rooms) and was beautifully made up, with fresh hibiscus blossoms everywhere, even in the shower and on top of the safe. The bungalow was palatial in size and more comfortable than anywhere we've ever stayed. The property itself is gorgeous and in pristine condition, having next to no damage from the tsunami (they're on the opposite side of the island and only had higher than normal wave surges). The resort has a beautiful pool,tennis courts, basketball courts, a hillside sunset bar, a games room with pool, darts & ping-pong, a reading library and video collection, kayaks and snorkel gear all complimentary. We took advantage of them all.

We also took advantage of the free Introduction to Scuba Diving class taught in the pool. We had an instructor for just the two of us and after a quick intro to the gear, we knelt under the water and practiced finding our regulators, putting them in our mouths and clearing the water. We're not all that comfortable around water and the one thing we try to do is keep our mouths closed so this task took a little getting used to. We also tried flooding our masks and then clearing them underwater, a task Pearse was better at than Amie. But by the end of our lesson we had no problems replacing our regulators and were even comfortable using each others extra regulators in case of emergency. We were then given the opportunity to swim around the bottom of the pool and work on our buoyancy skills. All in all it was a good experience that left one of us with a strong desire to try an open-water course.

All of these free activities were great, but the best part of the resort was its location: a beautiful beach with warm turquoise water and a fantastic reef easily within swimming distance - even easier at low tide, white sand, nicely spaced shade trees. And best of all (for us) is that usually we were the only ones out there. We never ran into people in the water and were rarely within shouting distance of them on the beach. The resort must be losing tons of money but we did the best we could to make it up to them. We even invited our friends Tobi and Gino who were planning on going to PP anyway and together we made a small dent in the resort's alcohol supplies as well as our respective budgets. It was fun to share the resort with friends who could appreciate it as much as we did.

The facilities, food and location were excellent but even those were eclipsed by the professional and extremely friendly staff. This is the best managed property we've ever stayed in and it was great to enjoy such quality and see people having so much fun while they worked. It kind of reminded us of our workplaces ;) Overall it was a wonderful taste of paradise (even the storm clouds couldn't dampen our spirits). I guess you could say this is the flash part of flashpacking.