Phang Nga day

We left Khao Sok and headed south, towards the famous and extremely popular Phuket island. Obviously we jumped off the bus just in time to avoid it and go instead to a nearby Phang Nga town. This is a small city, and so far still out of the classic tourist trail, but a good base to visit the Phang Nga bay and its beautiful limestone islands. It's very easy (and relatively cheap) to book a day-trip tour with a travel agency and visit the area on a long boat, and this is exactly what we had in mind.

The town is nothing special, but I liked it. Located in a valley surrounded by low green hills, it develops along the main road. It's not really interesting nor beautiful, but it feels authentic (as opposed to places that live only thanks to the tourists) and the people are generally very nice and friendly. The downside of having little tourism is that few people speak English.

Our bus arrived at lunchtime. The hunger, together with the heat and the luggage on our backs, pushed us to make a fast decision regarding the accommodation. Luckily we found immediately a nice and cheap hotel, with a very friendly and chatty owner, and could go to get lunch.

As it's common here, the hotel owner did also arrange tours and rent motorbikes at competitive prices. When we told him that we wanted to rent a scooter the following day and book a tour for the day after (since the weather forecast was better) he began a heartbreaking marketing campaign to convince us to do the tour first and rent a scooter later. The reason was that apparently he had only two people booked for the next day and running a tour for few people would barely cover the expenses. Although we tried to stick to our plan, it became harder and harder to resist his friendly and polite lamentations. A closure was reached when he offered us free motorbike rental if we did the tour first. K's eyes sparkled and the deal was reached.

We've got a deal!

The next morning nine people showed up for the tour, and we laughed at how the hotel guy had tricked us. In any case the boat was big enough for all of us and we enjoyed the (partially cloudy, as forecasted) day very much. The tour began with a boat ride to a mangrove forest, which brought us closer to the highlight of the day: the stunning islands of the bay.

The first stop was the inevitable Ko Tapu, better known as "James Bond island" (since it appeared in one of his movies). The tiny needle island in front of it is remarkable, but the hordes of tourists and stalls selling touristic crap strip it of any charm. You even have to actually queue up in order to take a picture of the famous rock.

Crowded boat landing

The Russian girl loved her pose... and K snapped a picture

Afterwards we passed near a couple of other beautiful islands, crowded with large boats and canoe tours. Our day trip felt quite adventurous compared to these massive touristic organizations. Even more so when we noticed that many people wouldn't even bother to paddle their own canoe, choosing to hire a "local paddler" instead. Fortunately from that moment on we were able to avoid the other tours.

Two hearts and an extra paddler

After a brief stop on yet another island to visit a small but nice cave, we were ready for the lunch break. The boat arrived at a beautiful desert beach and gave us enough time to swim around, eat and relax. The beach was quite big and the whole group spread out nicely. We have seen prettiest beaches, but the view from this one was still pretty spectacular.

Our boat for one day

 

On the way back we stopped at a peculiar, although not very interesting, Muslim fishermen village. It is built entirely on tall platforms over the water, and the people living there constitute an independent cultural group, quite different from that of the surrounding Thai region. It might have been so, but from our point of view it was just a bunch of restaurants and shops ready to squeeze a few Bahts out of tourists like us. The most interesting things for me were the many walking fish (fish that are able to crawl and even climb using two small frontal legs) that we spotted from the platforms, and the huge cats that live in the village.

As promised we were allowed to use a scooter for free the next day. K drove us around a couple of places, like a temple with creepy statues (representing Buddhist hell and heaven), a cave and a waterfall. Even without any major touristic attraction it turned out to be a nice day.

Getting out of the Dragon cave

Hell or heaven? Try to guess

On the road again, this time driving on the left side of the road

The problems came when we tried to arrange a bus to our next destination. At this point the general lack of English of the people in town (or rather our ignorance of Thai language) became a burden. We weren't able to understand if and how we could book a night bus, and where the pick-up would be. After asking a couple of people and "discussing" it with the hotel owner we decided to take our chances and launched ourselves into a night-trip adventure. Our Thai visa would expire in two days and we needed to do a "visa run", that is crossing a border with another country and come back to Thailand to get a new fifteen-days visa. Our next destination is Hat Yai, the last stop before crossing the border to Malaysia.