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A hard day’s ride from Phuket brought us to the town of Phang Nga, situated right next to the famous bay with the same name. The heat was ferocious again, and Nic pulled a muscle behind his knee, which didn’t help.
At the hotel that evening we met another cycling duo – Clemence and Therese, from Germany. They were on a cycling holiday in Thailand, and we exchanged notes and stories.
We took the next day off and signed up for a longtail boat tour, and sea kayaking to see this lovely bay, with extraordinary karst silhoutettes and sharp rocks jutting straight out of the sea. Many of the formations have nicknames suggested by their weird outlines (Dog Rock – a rock that looks like a … errm dog?).
Early in the morning we were picked up by a taxi and taken to the pier. Expecting to clamber onboard into a longtail with a dozen tourists already in and waiting, we were surprised to be told that we would get our very own longtail, since we were going for sea kayaking afterwards!! (which the others did not). The boat first took us out on the narrow waterways through the thick mangrove forest, then through (!) a cave (with stalactites hanging down above our heads), to reach the open sea with the rock formations all looming around and ahead of us. Once in the sea, we were taken immediately to the now rather infamous James Bond island, Scaramanga’s hideaway in The Man With the Golden Gun. A little known fact here is that our good friend Monty goes by the monika of Scaramanga, so we just had to go check the place out to make sure he had no evil plans in store for us! :p We got there just in time before the hundreds of tourist boats from Phuket arrived. These days there would be no room on the beach for James Bond to land his flying-boat on, amidst the hundreds of trinket sellers!! Monty is obviously using this as a clever ploy to conceal his new secret base on the island! :p
After the James Bond island (endearingly called ‘Jame Born’ by the locals), we were taken to the sea-kayak launch, where we were bundled into a kayak, given a guide and a paddle, and pushed out to sea. An hour’s paddling inches away from the razer sharp rocks, and sometimes laying down fully to get through the narrow gap between the sea and the rock hanging above. It was great fun! Oh and we saw a crocodile (or should that be an alligator??).
Back on the boat, we were taken to see a cave with prehistoric cave paintings, and then taken to a muslim village nearby, built completely on stilts over the sea. We had a rather expensive lunch there (!) and then browsed around the back street markets catering for all the tourists who stop there during the bay tour. Sedef bought a lovely blue-green mother of pearl bracelet here, after haggling the price down from 850 Baht (about 13 pounds) to 100 Baht (about 1.50!). She calls it her ‘shiny thing’ and believes it brings her good luck!
