Western Naivety in the Developing World: A Journey Through the Jungle of Koh Phi Phi

When I first arrived in Thailand's most popular tourist island of Koh Phi Phi, I was generally unimpressed by the hordes of very young Australians, Americans and Europeans who seemed to be there for the sole purpose of drinking/ becoming so inebriated there was a real potential they would drown in the ocean. I prided myself on being older, wiser and much removed from the unwashed masses of Western cretins. But Phi Phi's undeniable beauty did entice me and, being a newfound "digital nomad" I was eager to familiarize myself with my surroundings while seeing a bit more of what the island's natural environment had to offer.

So I Googled, "best cafes to work in on Koh Phi Phi" and saw that one of the cafes that was most highly rated (on Yelp) was indicated to be about an hour's walk away, on the other side of the island. Now, Phi Phi is one of the smallest destination islands in southern Phi Phi and I should mention that I grew up on an island (Hawaii), so I felt pretty confident about walking across this meagre distance and finding the cafe myself. I asked my friends if they wanted to join me and they said they would come along in a couple of hours, I even mentioned to them that I thought I would walk and dismissed their opinions that it seemed a bit far.

I packed my backpack with my Macbook, my charger, a notebook and a pen into my bag, grabbed a handful of cash and headed out across the island. I didn't pack any water because I decided that I would buy a nice latte at the cafe. Finally, I donned myself in my Topshop dungarees, with my cropped Calvin Klein sports bra underneath, and my Stan Smith trainers to finish off my look. These were the early days of my travel when style still mattered to me. This would be the day where all of that would change, irrevocably.

As I started walking away from the main port around the curvature of the bay, it began to get increasingly "off-road" and jungly, first this was just with some rural houses and spread out wooded sign posts towards various far-reaching resorts. Then an angry dog snarled and chased me down a dirt path filled with holes. There were misquotes everywhere, emerging out of tall grass on either side of me and the people traversing the increasingly narrow road became fewer and fewer.

Finally the path wound its way down to a somewhat rocky outcrop with little wooden villas spread out along independent stretches of golden beach. There were wooden planks acting as swings suspended from the trees that sprung out of the cliff.

Several confused Thai people who obviously worked at this resort spotted me and asked me where I was trying to go. I brought out my smartphone's Maps and indicated the red point across the jungle space in front of me. I pointed and they consulted with each other before finally directing me to a thin and barely visible winding path that led up into the dense jungle on the other side of the resort. Perhaps it was because I had an audience watching me at this point but as soon as I was shown the right way I headed out with as much determination as I could muster, straight up and into the thick forest of Koh Phi Phi.

This is as good a time as any to mention that I had started this journey around midday, and as I meandered further along the dirt trail, it grew hotter and hotter as the trees around me acted as insulation. There was absolutely no breeze. The air was thick and dense with sounds I'd never heard before. I occasionally glanced a look upwards only to see dozens of eyes from monkeys glaring curiously back at me from the treetops. My heart was racing, but I can't say that I was scared so much as entering into some kind of survivalist mode. There was barbed wire sporadically lining the trail, when it would seemingly disappear below an inch of leaves. My shoes caused me to slide and I would trip on vines. My sunglasses kept slipping from my face because of the copious amount of sweat that was cascading down my whole body. At one point the trail divvied up into a spider network with no clear way forward. Amazingly, my phone was still showing me as a blue dot lost in the middle of the Phi Phi jungle. It was at this point, with the clear visual that I realized just how stupid I had been, trying to walk across the middle of an unknown, foreign landscape in the middle of the day without any water.

About an hour into this venture, after having taken many unknown guesses for routes I genuinely started to get worried. In the back of my mind I was vaguely aware that these jungles probably had lots of snakes and other creepy crawlies that I was not prepared to face. The gentle hooting noises from the monkey's and occasionally rustling leaves in my peripheral was starting to make me feel crazed. I was walking faster and faster and sweating profusely. It was then that I started to feel incredibly dizzy and so I smacked myself full across the face and marched on. The path split again into another fork, one leading up yet another steep slope, while the other direction opened out onto tall, jungly swamplands with a little ramshackle hut dotting the horizon, but without any promising sign of life. I looked at my phone and noticed the battery was running low but I still had signal, so I called my friends who told me they thought I should just come back and were shocked to learn that I had walked so far off into a jungle, "I thought you'd just take a boat there!" They told me. However, I recognized that this option had just as much potential for going wrong as going forward, and based on my Google Maps I was certain that I was closer to the other side of the island. So then I called my friends I knew that were doctors, because I was worried about how to prevent myself from passing out in the oppressive heat of the jungle. They told me to sit down and to try to calm down before continuing.

After a handful of the longest minutes of my life sitting on that leafy jungle floor, canopied by monkeys in trees who were greedily eyeing my backpack, I decided to choose the open route, if only to get away from the trees. Ten minutes on and I realized I had geographically made the right decision because there were signs pointing towards the Tsunami Evacuation Centre. However welcome this sign was, the oppressive heat was now direct in the 2pm sun and I was incredibly overheated. As I walked towards the Tsunami Evacuation Centre, I happened upon some basic dwellings and shops with people outside under shaded awnings. I asked them if they had any water, fully aware of how ridiculous I must look to them, emerging from the jungle with a backpack and in denim dungarees. They did have water, and it was cheaper than anywhere else on the island so I eagerly bought three bottles and poured half of the first bottle on my head to cool down. Then I asked which way was towards the beach (where I guessed I could catch a boat back to the port where I knew my hotel was).

They pointed me down a long cement and exposed road that was only slightly raised above swamp land on either side for as far as I could see. I smiled my thanks and headed off, eager to get to the beach as soon as possible. About 15 minutes later I arrived at a stripped, broken and deserted skeleton of a former resort. It was a huge sprawling complex, that looked like it had once been very elegant, but now was barren. A plaque informed me that the resort had been destroyed by the Tsunami of 2004 and it was haunting. The cicadas echoed wildly as I wandered through its remnants, which were mysteriously filled with goats.

Then, miraculously, I spotted the sparkling blue of the sea as it blazoned through the wispy trees that dotted the shoreline. I approached about as happy as I could be after my ordeal in the jungle and there were only a handful of people scattered about, all of whom were butt naked. Full-frontal nudity, in the most beautiful bay I'd ever seen in my life. But more promisingly there were myriads of little wooden boats tethered along the shore, waiting to be hired by anyone who might want them. I was so relieved that I threw myself into a stringy rope hammock between two palm trees and plopped my unused backpack with its useless Macbook down. I laid under the trees for about an hour drinking water and trying to cool down, unabashedly staring at the chubby naked people and feeling profoundly lucky and stupid all at once. I had somehow managed to survive my first real South East Asian adventure.