Day 45: Bye Bye Pee Pee

J tries the beers in every country we pass through, I try whatever thing seems to reappear on the menus - a ginger fizz, mango, a specialty tea, young coconut with umbrellas and fresh flowers. I must proceed with caution because it can break all sorts of safe food consumption abroad rules. Another one down before moving on to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

There is a t shirt for sale on the island that rattles off all of the catastrophes that Thailand has endured in recent years-bombings, bird flu, SARS, the Boxing Day tsunami. You'd have trouble determining that most everything on this little island was washed away but you see it remembered on the murals and photos in the restaurants and shops. This is a fly over shot of where the Internet café we frequented wasn't after the tsunami.

This is what the harbor looks like today but surely it will continue morphing. Books from 1997 show this same coastline thick with trees instead of tsunami-front resort bungalows.
What I do hope endures are the signature things like longtail taxis, Thai chilis, fire-twirlers, and the amazing underwater world off Phi Phi's shores. Things that might benefit from progress's touch? Figuring out how TP can be safely flushed down the loo or how to manage the faint but chronic sun-warmed smell of sewer gas, floodplain and trash while walking the streets. J learned that the few mopeds allowed on the island that we never see are used for trash pick up. Related to Phi Phi's odor? Perhaps there is correlation.

Bye Bye Pee Pee.

Check out our phat ride from the ferry to the airport. It seemed that our teenaged driver was using his mom's taxi driver license. He didn't look much like the 50ish woman on the placard.
And the airplane Jello. I truly cannot tell you what was suspended in the gelatin disc.