Phang Nga Bay

Today I have been to my new favourite place that I've ever travelled to - Phang Nga Bay north-east of Phuket is simply the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I am sure that if you visit during high season your experience would be somewhat different and irritating to say the least, marred by the miriad of a million other farang sharing the bay with you, but today there were just a couple of boats and it was amazing. We lucked out totally with the weather too, sunny, hot and calm and it just made for a really fab trip.

Phang Nga Bay is made up of over 100 little islands and although I've put some photos up they really don't do it justice, it's kind of a see-it-to-believe-it place. We went in pairs in little canoes into Hongs (Thai word for 'room') which meant paddling through limestone caves where sometimes they were so low we had to lie down in the canoe so we could get through, then emerging into lagoons and grottos that are open to the sky but completely hidden from the outside world. It was really good fun and really honestly very stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately didn't see any crab-eating macaques (swimming monkeys that do exactly as their name suggests - they eat crabs and fish) but it's probably just as well because if a monkey had swum up to us I'd have been so excited that I probably would have fallen out of the canoe.

From Koh Hong and Koh Panak (where we canoed) we then went to Khao Tapu which was the location for Scaramanga's hideaway in The Man with the Golden Gun (see photo, am sure you'll recognise it).

Then onto Lawa Island which is simply a stunningly beautiful remote island with a wonderful beach, where we got to swim and cool down and lie about a bit. Until another boat turned up which was chocca full of tourists and guides...but it actually made for a really brilliant atmosphere because somebody brought a football with them and all of a sudden it was oars for goalposts and an impromptu game of footie followed with the Thai guides (blue shirts) versus the farang (bare-chested so let's call them the reds as we've all been a victim of the sunburn over here). Oh, on a tangent - the suntan lotion we bought we now realise was 2 years out of date so that's why we got burnt to crisps. D'oh!


I want to write loads of funny stuff but today was relaxing and beautiful and lovely and so I'm just going to leave it at that for now.