day 7: koh phi phi leh

the next morning we climbed through the jungle back over to tong sai to book a tour around the island and over to the uninhabitated koh phi phi leh.  eventually we loaded into our long-tail boat and were off to the the beautiful island nextdoor with the most dramatic limestone cliffs of them all and the home of maya bay, the bay made famous in that movie with leo.  we were enjoying the scenery from the boat and then pulled into a shallow area between the cliffs where the driver dropped anchor and we all jumped into the clear blue sea for some more amazing snorkeling.  luck was with us again as we saw another rare animal swimming around: a sea snake!  i get nervous around any snake and i know sea snakes are very poisenous but of course michael was fearless and dove for a stick to play with the snake.  it was pretty small, with black and blue stripes and was not aggressive at all, but i still kept my distance and watched michael whirl him around.  our next stop was my favorite bay of the trip.  i can see now that movie scouters certainly know what they are doing because maya bay is spectacular.  you enter a small opening between two dramatic plunging cliffs into this shangri-la bay of clear blue water, white sand, and cool rock formations.  i went for a swim straight away and then enjoyed the sun and the radient colors around before some clouds started rolling in above.  we stayed here for a while and had lunch on the sand.  i didnt want to leave but we had much more to see.  we headed back over to phi phi don to start our boat-trek around the island and actually stopped at runtee bay again.  we snorkeled out at the reef where it drops off into the deep and were lucky again and spotted the sometimes hard to find true clown fish that looked just like nemo.  it was a cute little family with a mama, papa, and a litle guy.  they were swimming around there little anemone home, backing in and out of the swaying tenticles.  by this point the clouds kept increasing and at the next stop we ended up snorkeling in a major downpour which was kind of fun too.  this storm wasn't letting up though, so it kept us from going any further and we headed back to port.  it was a mellow night for us with the rain still coming down so we watched a movie in our room and thoroughly enjoyed the relaxation.