Ko Phi Phi - March

PP- it is fucked, I doubt I will ever return. It was so sad seeing it. As you pull up on the ferry you see right through to the other side, just palm trees...no 7-11, no hospital, tonsai village bungalows, just the cabana and the shadey porch thing that was in the centre of the hippo/visa complex. Its odd none of that being there.

The main street is recovering slowly, loads of rubble still, and parts of buildings. From pp scuba onwards along the front is pretty much looking like normal, and you can almost pretend nothing happened. But that is all that is normal, the road with the adventure club and viking on it are looking ok, but then there is nothing.

From where V shop was, the market, sale pepe, the pool bar, the resevoir...none of it is there. Just personal belongings in with the sand and a few palm trees. No charlies, no princess (apart from the pool), no ciao bella...nothing that side at all...whole swathes of the island gone, or parts of buildings precariously hanging on.

I found it very hard to orientate myself, looking for landmarks or trying to work out what had been where, I felt lost, somewhere I knew really well. It is so tragic when you knew the island and how many hundreds of bungalows and people etc., had been there. Fattys... half of it standing open to the elements, mosquito...so sad.

Carlitos is the office or base for the volunteers of hi phiphi and other organisations, and is good in terms of letting you know what is open, of which there isn't a huge amount. Its also odd as the areas that were untouched were areas that never really existed when I was there. They built a concrete monstrosity complex in the middle which contains reggae, tiger, rolling stoned, islander bar, madam resto etc., about a million ATMs everywhere you look...very surreal, but at least Nods (papaya is open).

Unfortunately I found out about some more people who didn't make it, the lovely woman from sawadee that would come round the dive shops on her bike, and do food for karma party nights didn't survive and neither did her children, and lovely Somchai didn't survive either and his body was never located. His family were in krabi though. Weird story with him, he had moved to run white and blue, the head of tourists police phone rang and it was somchai telling them they could see his hand to get him out, so people ran over and were digging through rubble but couldn't find him. The phone rang again and it was somchai but no voice could be heard. His body was never found, so the thai belief is it was his ghost.

The land, pp is fucked and raw and sad, any night that I wasn't off my nut, I had really vivid nightmares, like I could see the tsunami, the people, and I'm not one to freak easy.Quite a lot of people have almost identical dreams or hear things at night...I don't know.

I'm glad I went as now I know the truth but I won't go back, and I wish my friends would just leave. The place and memories I had of pp didn't exist even before the tsunami, you look around and the island was turning into patong, into touristville. I did what I could, but the politics, the shit between the volunteering groups etc. was draining and disappointing. I thought people would pull together, not be competitive and looking for the worst in people. Disillusioned. I didn't like the vibe on the island at all, others do and think its great but not me.