12/18/09: Phi Phi Islands, Thailand
[Editor’s Note: In honor of our visit to the filming location of perhaps the best tropical Leonardo Dicaprio movie ever made (The Beach), this post will turn our pictures into an action movie that had nothing to do with what actually happened today.]
Two newlyweds, Evan and Flo, arrived at the Phi Phi Islands for a relaxing honeymoon away from the stress of their unemployed lives living at home with their parents in America. Mom and Dad, they should have taken your advice and stayed at home.
After dinner on their first night, Flo displayed her love for Evan by whittling a heart into her watermelon dessert.
Don't play with your food!
The two were so in love that they already had plans to have children and form a family band to tour the countryside. They woke up the following morning and went snorkeling (Evan, after watching Along Came Polly ten too many times, wouldn’t take a chance by scuba diving.)
She looks like a pro.
After enjoying the beautiful coral and fish, Evan couldn’t find his beloved wife.
At least the fish were beautiful.
He searched high and low, even though really there was nowhere high to go, so that half of the search was a waste of time. But no Flo.
See? No Flo, just magnificent rocks.
After mourning until the morning, he received a note in the mail. (Plot hole: how did he get mail on a tropical island?) Flo had been captured by monkeys and was being held on 10,000 bananas ransom.
The monkeys were very demanding.
Unfortunately Evan did not have 10,000 bananas, although he had recently learned to enjoy chocolate banana fruit shakes. There had to be another way to get Flo back. He found 10,000 bananas laying around and used them to rent a speedboat to get to Monkey Island.
Quite an expensive speedboat rental.
He sneaked past the monkey guards and climbed to the highest point he could find.
Our hero, looking for Flo and contemplating what to have for lunch.
After thirty minutes of scanning the island, he saw Flo just below the rock on which he was perched!
She's always in the last place you look.
Nuts, it turned out to be a monkey that looked like Flo. The monkey quickly cartwheeled away.
Don't you hate it when that happens?
Evan decided that in order to rescue his wife, he’d have to search every square foot of Monkey Island. Fortunately the island itself wasn’t all that big.
Look at the ominous/cool clouds above. The monkeys sometimes hid in the clouds.
After ten days of searching (this is the part of the movie where the director would take liberty as to all the trouble Evan got into), Evan finally found Flo squeezed under a rock.
The monkeys wedged her in there good.
He was so happy to see her alive, but he still had one final obstacle standing in the way of the two of them.
There were actually a bunch of these in the rocks, but we didn't notice them until after we took all the pictures.
He felt so unprepared for the task, but then he remembered the flute he kept in his back pocket. Evan quickly charmed the snake to sleep, then snuck Flo to where he docked his speedboat. Before getting her to safety though, he held Flo in a long, made-for-television embrace. (A movie with this plot would never make it in the theaters. Well, Mars Attacks did, so I suppose anything stands a chance.)
Reunited again before the final plot twist.
It those twelve minutes of hugging, the King Monkey hopped down from the clouds and landed on Flo’s head!
I know this picture was from yesterday, but it fit so well in this story I had to use it.
Evan panicked and began flinging feces at the animal. (Whose feces? We’ll never know.) Then he realized he was bigger than K.M., so he grabbed it by the tail and used his Gold Medal experience in the hammer throw to hurl K.M. far far away. The two newlyweds then motored back to safety.
Who's driving the boat??
That night, they threw a huge party with all their friends. The end.
What an awesome movie! Spielberg, how did I do?
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Puzzles for Postcards
Where Am I? Name the city.
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Thought of the Day: After the trip, I’m not only going to direct an Oscar-winning movie, but also write a New York Times bestseller.
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Picture of the Day: I wanted to fit this picture of a menacing shadow into the plot somehow, but it wound up on the cutting room floor.
no hurry curry 