Pictures from Ko Phi Phi climbing can be viewed below. These are all the good pictures and are of mostly myself, Lauren, Karem, and Christin... however we ran into some other cool climbers and took pictures of them as well so I threw them in as well!

http://squeeek.com/brent/images/albums/2005-12-18_Ko_Phi_Phi_Climbing/

You are sitting on a beach in the middle of Thailand and attending a Glogg party with xmas carols playing at the local bar.
Or possibly when a local Thai's cell phone rings and the ringer is jingle bells (do they even celebrate Christmas as a local holiday??)

Today was a relaxing rest day. We got up -- went and had breakfast -- chilled on the beach until it started raining... and then escaped back to the bungalow. Tomorrow is our last day climbing on Phi Phi which is quite sad. I've grown to really enjoy my time here and am definitely going to be back. It's a lot like climbing at Vertex -- all the local climbers now recognize us and stop on the street for a quick conversation about how the days climbing went.

Yesterday we went out to Monkey Bay (Hin Tak possibly?) and went climbing out with the monkeys. The routes were amazing. Quite technical and incredibly fun long sport routes. I went up and hung out to get pictures of Karem and Cathrine climbing on a 6c and 7a. The water below was so crystal clear it was just an amazing setting with AWESOME routes. We finished the day up by getting some bouldering on right on the beach. There was a perfect roof with about 5 problems on it that ranged from a V1 to a V5. They were simply specatcular (as long as you threatened the monkeys with rocks -- else they'd come up and find your food in your packs and throw who knows what at you...).

Anywase, gotta run! Fire show and then sleep for a good day of climbing!

So I'm getting my climbs on. It's slowly coming back. Today was the first day where I started climbing on 6a's and 6b's that didn't just freak me out. In fact, thanks to Kevin's climbing lessons, I sat there and depumped while in midroute. It was awesome!!

Tomorrow one of the local climbing guides is taking me out to the drinking wall here on Phi Phi Don and we're going to shoot some pictures of him and some of the other local climbers. They're going to be working harder routes -- from 7a's up through 8c's. Should be sick to watch! I'll probably top rope some of the 7a's depending on how they look.

We also ran into a crazy french climber who is staying at the same guest house/bungalows as us. He's pretty cool and was very fun to climb with. He ended up showing up at the cliff base with a pair of rented shoes and a rented harness and then hopped right in with us -- climbing 6a's and b's with no problem.

Anywase, gotta run -- getting tons of awesome pictures from the island and it's gonna be sad to leave this place in 3 days. It's become a home and I've made some good friends here. I'll just have to come back some day :)

We arrived on Phi Phi yesterday after a 3hour boat ride from Phuket. It's simply amazing here. Phuket was so large that you didn't really realize that you were still on an island. It's so much smaller here -- and everything is so close to the water that it's very apparent. It's hard to imagine the tsunami pounding through here -- but construction and empty lots are all around. You meet local people here who have that look in their eyes making them appear much older then they really are. Entire families were killed and there was so much destruction here.

Hopefully tomorrow we are going to go on the tsunami walk -- a free walk of the island where they show you how the tsunami affected people and the island itself. It should be quite interesting. Then it's on to climbing! I got some HUGE blisters on my toes that I'm waiting for to dry up (from the fins while diving) but I'm itching to get on the rock. It simply looks amazing here!

Got to run -- expensive here in Phi Phi for the interweb. But let me leave you with this ... we're in a bungalow up about 10m from the ocean on a small cliff. The guest house has a small private beach and a crazy french lady who helps run it and does the cleaning. It has a view of Phi Phi Ley and the other side of the Ton Sai harber/bay. It's just amazing!