Day 91 – April 16 – Phuket, Thailand

We could not dock in Phuket City as planned as the taxi drivers are blocking the entrance to the port in a dispute with the bus drivers.  We had been told of the problem a couple of days ago.  So we had to go to the other side of the Island and anchor in Patong Bay and tender in.  The beaches all along this Bay are very beautiful.

We actually did a tour today.  We took the Spectacular Phang Nga Bay tour of 8 hours.  We started out with a drive over the hills back to the Phuket City side of the island then about one hour through the north of Phuket Island over the bridge to the Phang-Nga National Park.  Most of this park is limestone islands know as karst formations.  They are covered in green hanging flora and have strange and interesting limestone formations where the water is dissolving the rock.

We boarded one of the tourist boats with our bus of 29 having a boat just to itself.  Our guide, Jennifer, was very, very funny and a good guide.  Our first stop was along side one of the island where a shallow cave has formed from the weathering.  Inside the cave you could see some very old cave paintings.  They were brown and color and a little hard to see.

The next stop was a cave where an arch had been cut and of course we sailed through it.  There were several large boats there as well that were day trips out of Phuket for canoeists.  We saw several parties of canoeists paddling along the sides of the islands and exploring some of the shallow caves and interesting limestone formations.

Kao Ping-Gan Island was the next destination.  It is famous because part of the James Bond thriller, The Man with the Golden Gun, was filmed here.  We could not land on the island because there is not a proper jetty so we just sailed around it enjoying the views.

The final stop in the National Park was on the Island of Koh Panyee, a small island inhabited chiefly by Museum fishermen originally from Indonesia.  When the National Park was established, they could no longer fish commercially in the waters around their homes so it has become a tourist attraction.  There were many restaurants, hundreds of shops and small stores as well as the homes.  Almost all of these buildings were built on stilts with only a very small part of the island having any room for buildings.  One of the interesting things was the soccer courts.  Apparently, they young men of the island are very good at soccer and have even won some tournaments.  So the government has built a new soccer court on silts with special drainage for when it rains.   It was an interesting stop and we found some nice shirts for both us…as if we needed any more souvenirs.

Back on land we had a very nice buffet lunch of Thai food at the Phang Nga Bay Resort, a small hotel at the jetty area where we boarded the boat.

On the drive back, we stopped at a tourist trap where they showed how to tap a rubber plant.  They also had some elephants there which we did not see but others in the groups said was a very sad site and they felt the elephants were being abused.  

We saw an accident right in front of the bus when we had crossed back over to the mainland.  Our bus stopped right away to block traffic from hitting the young woman laying in the road and the others that were trying to help.  The other bus behind us also stopped and both guides and drivers got out to help.  Apparently, the young woman had fallen off the motorbike and had a very bloody head and face.  An emergency vehicle got there very quickly and they picked her up and took her away.  With all the motorbikes and how they drive, it is a wonder that we didn’t see more accidents.

The final stop was at a large pearl and souvenir shop but we only had 20 minutes since we had to drive back over the island to where the ship was anchored.  We had about 600 baht left and Jan found a white elephant for just that amount!

Back on board we decided to open one of the bottles of champagne we have for the sail away and watched from our balcony.  Rajib brought us three kinds of canapés and that was what we had for dinner.