Koh Phi Phi

Beaches are why people come, and the water earns it: clear, turquoise and around 29°C all year, set under limestone cliffs. Loh Dalum, behind the village, is broad and sandy but very shallow at low tide and busy with day-trippers. For better swimming, walk or take a longtail to Long Beach, with its view of Phi Phi Leh, or stay up at Laem Tong in the north, where the sand is soft, the water calm and the beach quieter.

Boat trips add Bamboo Island's white sand and the famous coves of Phi Phi Leh, where Maya Bay is more for looking at than swimming. The sea is calmest from November to April; from May to October the swell rises and some boat trips are cancelled.

Eating centres on Tonsai village, a few lanes of open-fronted restaurants serving Thai curries, fried rice, wood-fired pizza and burgers to a mostly backpacker crowd. The best of it is simple: banana roti from street carts, a plate of pad kra pao, and seafood laid out on ice and grilled on the beach in the evening. Resorts on the northern beaches have their own restaurants with pleasant views and standard menus. Ingredients come in by boat and the cooking is often toned down for visitors, so anyone travelling to eat will find much more on the mainland.

There is very little to see in the sense of sights. The village is a modern tangle of guesthouses and shops, and the island's past as a fishing and coconut settlement has left almost nothing a visitor would set out to find. A small tsunami memorial and the cliff entrance of Viking Cave, where swiftlet nests are gathered, seen from a passing boat, are about all. A vacation here is about the sea and the scenery.

Phi Phi has a name for partying, and it lives up to it on a small scale. Every night after dark the bars on Loh Dalum beach lay out mats and low tables, throw fire-dancing displays, pump out dance music and serve drinks in plastic buckets until the early hours. Inside the village, small reggae bars and pubs fill up, and some bars put on amateur Muay Thai bouts for visitors to watch.

It is loud, young and fairly uniform: a beach party rather than a range of scenes, busiest from November to April. If you want quiet evenings, stay at Laem Tong or one of the more remote beaches, where nights end with dinner.

The landscape is the island's other great draw: sheer limestone walls rising straight out of the sea, with the two halves of Phi Phi Don joined by a narrow sandy isthmus. A steep climb from the village leads to the viewpoint over both bays, at its best near sunset. Longtail and kayak trips run under the cliffs of uninhabited Phi Phi Leh into the enclosed emerald water of Pileh Lagoon.

Under water, Bida Nok and Bida Nai have walls covered in soft coral, and blacktip reef sharks patrol the shallows at Shark Point. Rock climbers use the bolted cliffs near Tonsai. The reefs show the wear of heavy boat traffic, and the island is small enough to know in a few days.

Separate places to visit mean boarding a ferry. Koh Lanta is about an hour away, with its stilt-house old town on the east coast. Ao Nang and the cliff-backed peninsula of Railay are about an hour and a half by boat. Phuket Town, with its Sino-Portuguese shophouses, takes around two hours each way, which makes for a long day. Most excursions from Phi Phi are boat tours to nearby uninhabited islands and bays, so a visitor who wants towns and heritage should plan them as separate stops on a wider Andaman route.

Families can have a good time here if they choose their base carefully. The resorts at Laem Tong and on the quieter northern beaches have calm, shallow water and pools, and children enjoy snorkelling with fish and riding longtail boats. There are no cars on the island, which helps.

The village tells another story: noisy until late, with tight lanes, partying crowds and steep, unlit paths to the outer beaches. There are no attractions made for children and only basic medical care on the island, and the ferry crossing can be rough outside the dry season.

There are no roads for cars. Tonsai village and Loh Dalum are a few minutes' walk apart along narrow lanes shared with handcarts and bicycles. Everything else, including Long Beach, Laem Tong and the outlying bays, means hiring a longtail boat or walking steep, rough paths over the hills. Getting to Phi Phi takes a ferry from Phuket, Krabi or Ao Nang of an hour and a half to two hours. If you stay at a northern resort, arrange the boat transfer in advance, and expect choppier crossings from May to October.

Shopping amounts to the village lanes: beachwear, sarongs, souvenir T-shirts, sunscreen, dive and snorkel gear, and a handful of tailor and jewellery stalls. There are no markets or local crafts worth seeking out. Buy what you need before you arrive and leave serious shopping for the mainland.

By Thai standards Phi Phi is expensive. Everything arrives by boat, space is tight, and rooms in the dry season cost far more than on the mainland, especially at the beach resorts in the north. Drinks, boat tours and longtail rides add up quickly, and visitors pay an entry fee to the island and the marine park. Budget travellers still manage it in dormitories, with roti from carts and simple rice dishes, but anyone expecting typical Thai prices will notice the difference.

There is essentially no performing arts scene. Evening entertainment means fire-dancing displays on the beach and acoustic or cover acts in village bars, all part of a night out rather than anything you would plan a vacation around.

Thai massage is everywhere, in simple shophouse parlours in the village and on mats in the shade along the beaches, and the larger resorts on the northern coast have proper spas set among the trees. Whether a stay feels restful depends entirely on where you sleep. At Laem Tong or the isolated eastern bays, days pass slowly between hammock, sea and massage. In and around Tonsai village, music carries late into the night and the lanes are crowded with day-trippers.