#Coconutskill

After our boat trip, we decided that we had seen enough of Patong beach and I suggested returning to Phi Phi to soak up the sun. Our days were simple, we woke, we ate pancakes, we sat on the beach, we napped, we read and then in the evenings we went to Banana Bar.

Banana Bar is a home away from home with its Mexican themed bright paintings and cheap drinks. Every evening they play a different movie and then ample amounts of R&B music. There’s also a resident cat that likes to chill there and lies on the floor like it’s dead so that the pretty girls stroke him! He is living his best life!

Speaking of, I think it’s time to share how my life almost came to be over.

The day started well, pancake then beach but then we went off course! “Let’s go to the viewpoint!” James suggested.
I agreed not knowing the danger ahead. Not far along the path we were ambushed by a pride of monkeys (I don’t know the plural term for a group of monkeys, I’ll google it later) I looked anxiously at James as one of them ambled towards us. Luckily I have experience with scaring off monkeys from my time on Monkey Road so I headed to find a stone.

I barely had time to inhale when SMASH! To the right of me an enormous brown coconut had smashed to the ground missing my head by a mere foot or two. Everyone around me gasped in shock!
“You almost died!” James shouted with tears burning in his eyes! (There were no literal tears but I think he was feeling them internally.)

It was like I had been given a second chance at life! I almost died! I thought to myself! And then again out loud for the rest of the afternoon!
“I wish the coconut had bloody killed you so you would shut up about it!” James eventually snapped!
I looked at him with sad, dejected eyes! “How cruel!” I retorted.
A bit further from the point of my near death, we found another beach. It had far too many palm trees and I tried to create paths to avoid them but then there would be chickens. It was like a game where I had to dodge each of my phobias one by one. Chicken 10 points, palm tree 15 points, getting trapped in a cave 50 points!

We walked and walked and walked some more, each time we questioned if we were going the right way, we would see another ‘view point’ sign. We walked for at least two hours before we finally saw the guy at the ticket office! 30 baht later and we were finally there. The tide was out pretty far so it looked different from the last time I had gone. They tell you if there’s a tsunami warning that you have to go to the view point, we discussed if they would let you up without paying 30 baht and decided that they would probably inflate the price and send any penniless unfortunates back down to face the wave.

Later that night, we made a friend in Banana Bar called Martin. We all played cards together and I sang along to all the old school R&B songs. I told Martin of how I nearly died and of the statistic that I had googled that told me I would have been one of 150 annual coconut fatalities! The article also said that more people die from coconuts falling than of shark attacks! #coconutskill