We only have a couple of days left here in Thailand, so this morning Mrs. Columbus decides we should take the day and go for an adventure.  Her idea is that we should ride the local bus across the island to Phuket town, do a little shopping and sightseeing, and then catch the local bus back.

In telling stories around the dinner table we would refer to this as ‘The Chicken Bus’ as one can envision bus travel in foreign lands where you may end up sitting across the aisle from someone who is carrying their livestock with them to the next place.

It turns out that our experience was fairly civilized.  It may vary a bit by season, or the time of day you are using it, but when we jumped on at around mid-day there was only us and one other couple on the bus for the whole ride.  The bus wanders it’s way along the beach, and riders can just jump on at any point, and presumably jump off when they get to where they want to – no having to find a specific bus stop close to somewhere you want to be.  The bus runs every 1/2 hour and the fare is a paltry 30Baht (about $1) per person.  The route to town is about 20 miles, and the taxi fare to go there is about 500Baht, so it seems like a decent bargain even if all you wanted to do was go to the next beach.

We get close to the center of town and are starting to talk about where we want to wander around to, when a couple of locals jump on the bus.  We think nothing of it, but when we get to the last stop on the route, we find out that they are local taxi operators.  Basically the program works like this: the taxi drivers get a kickback (paid in gas for their car) if they bring tourists to certain shops (jewelry stores, souvenir shops, etc.) the more of these type of shops you stop at the less the taxi charge is going to be.  So mixed in with seeing a handful of things you actually want to see, you spend about 1/2 your time seeing a bunch of stuff you have seen before.

Well Mrs. Columbus shrewdly haggles her way down to just one stop (which turns out to be 4) and off we go.  All in all it is not that bad of an experience – if we had been better prepared we could have taken better advantage of the ride, as it seems like we could have gone anywhere in the town as long as we fit some stops in.  The driver is quite friendly, and he offers us a ride to the airport the next day for 600Baht (vs the 800Baht the taxis outside our hotel want) so that seems like a good deal and makes the stops at the retail shops more tolerable.

At the end of the day he drops us off at a ‘bus stop’ so we can catch our bus back to the beach.  There are other people waiting here so it looks good to us, and our driver tells us that the bus should be by anytime, or if we missed that one (we were right close to the 1/2 hour) there will be one more in 1/2 an hour before the bus stops for the night.  We start to chat up the other couple waiting here as they are going to the same place as us, and the time starts to tick by.  A local taxi driver starts to hassle us a bit, telling us there is no more bus coming and that he will take us back for 500 Baht. We are fairly confident there will be a bus, and we know that we could walk up the street a bit and get a taxi for 400Baht so we tell him no and keep waiting.  After about 40 minutes we begin to think that maybe we did miss the last bus and decide with the other couple to split a taxi back to the beach.  We flag down a tuk-tuk and he agrees to take us all back for 400Baht – as we jump in and start to pull away from the curb, we look back to see the bus turn the corner and approach our stop…….

Not that we are really complaining, the extra $4 for direct service does not seem all that bad, and we have another 20mins or so to chat with the people we met.

Finally it is back to the beach where we settle back into the rest of our routine, a walk on the beach, dinner, relax – a tough way to spend the day 🙂

Phuket Island is about 60km long and sort of juts down off the western side of southern Thailand as the mainland veers off a bit towards the east.  This creates a fairly large bay between the eastern side of Phuket and the mainland that is littered with hundreds of islands varying in size from too small for anything but a few trees, to several hundred acres and populated.  The bay is known Phang Nga Bay and touches 3 Thai provinces: Phuket, Phang Nga, and Krabi and because it ‘hides’ behind Phuket, the water is quite calm and they are able to run tours there even when the Andaman Sea is a little on the choppy side.

There are 2 fairly common tours that the travel vendors try and promote to all the tourists – one is the tour to Koh Phi Phi, a large island group in the south of the bay that is very scenic, has a couple of nice beaches, and some hotels and guesthouse that people can stay at.  There is apparently good diving there, and a lot of people come to the south just to go there.  The other well promoted tour goes to the north end of the bay and is known as the ‘James Bond Island’ tour.  The James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun was filmed in the bay in the 70’s, and anyone who has seen the film will recognize the distinctive tower like island that rises out of the water and looks like it is so narrow at the base that it will fall over any time.

I have seen the tour advertised many times on every trip here, but always thought it would be a little ‘cheesy’ and never paid it much attention.  After doing a bit of reading, and looking for a new adventure Mrs. Columbus and I decided to give the James Bond tour a try, and were very pleasantly surprised!

After haggling a generous discount to the high season price we were all set for our hotel pick-up the next day.  The tour includes transfer to/from your hotel, and then basically a full day out on the water.  The boat stops at 4 different islands in the bay for various sightseeing, snorkeling, sea kayaking, and some beach time.

Our first stop is at Hong Island in Krabi province.  In Thai, hong means an area that is like a cave, but open at the top and connected to the sea – over time the ‘tunnel’ opening that connects it to the sea will erode further, and it will turn into a little bay.  Hong Island in Krabi has already eroded away and what was once a lagoon connected to the sea by a tunnel is now a big ‘hidden’ bay in the middle of the island.  When the tide is low the bay drains almost completely to become a beach and small pond.  We arrive when the tide is high enough to go into the lagoon and look around, and then go out and around to another side of the island where the is a secluded beach for us to do some snorkeling and feed the fish.

Our next stop is at Panyee Island, this is at the top of the bay, and is mostly a floating village that is anchored on one side to a big limestone cliff that rises out of the bay.  I am not exactly certain as to why this was ever built here, but the village houses several hundred people who live and work there, mostly running restaurants that serve the tour boats.  Supposedly the seafood is caught locally and served fresh, but Mrs. Columbus will eat no fish that still has a head attached (as most fish here is served) so we don’t partake of anything too fancy.  Almost as impressive as the floating village itself is the orchestra of tour boats, speed boats, and long-tail boats jockeying for position at the dock to load and unload the 100s of tourists that are here for lunch at any given time – this is during the low season mind you, so during the high season it is even busier!

Our guide, through either skillful planning or sheer luck, has managed to slot us into the village for lunch at about the same time as the sky opens up for a brief rainy season cloud burst.  No bother to us as we enjoy our lunch and watch the storm roll in, and then about 40 minutes later roll back out – net impact to us basically nil 🙂

After lunch we get back onto the boat for our next destination – Koh Ping An and the infamous James Bond Island.  The tour route we have take thus far is actually the reverse of what many of the other tours are doing, so this allows us to get to certain stops ahead of or after the bulk of the other tour groups, and we pull up to Koh Ping An to have the small island almost to ourselves (our guide does warn us that if we stay for much longer than about 1/2 hour, the other tours will catch up, and we will be swarmed).  The little island and it’s direct view of the smaller ‘James Bond Island’ is actually quite impressive and as you look at the geology and the features of what has been carved out of the stone by natural forces it is quite inspiring, and not at all ‘cheesy’ as I thought it might be.

Back into the boat and off to our next stop – Hong Island.  Those that are paying attention will say, wait, did they not go to Hong Island as the first stop?  Well only in Thailand can you have 2 islands named Hong Island and be less than 50 miles apart – the first island was in Krabi province, and this one is in Phang Nga province, so as far as they are concerned, it is all good.   At this stop, the hongs on the island are still intact, and the lagoons on the center of the island are only accessible by going through the low tunnels.  We leave the boat to get into sea kayaks where a Thai guide will paddle us through the cave like tunnels to explore the hidden lagoons inside.  The tunnels are only accessible during the low tide, so there are times when the tide is too high for even the kayaks to go in and out.  The pictures really do not do the whole thing the justice it deserves, as it is quite breathtaking to enter some of the caverns and then pop out the other side into a column that opens up to the sky, but is flanked on all sides by 100 or more feet of vertical cliff walls.  We go through a couple of these and several caves and then it is time to round everyone back up and get back on the boat.

Our last stop of the day is on Koh Naka Yai, and there is a long open stretch of beach here.  The island is quite close to Phuket and the marina we left from (about 5km) and is quite popular during the day for people to come to use the isolated beach.  There are a couple of small bars here and the day boats shuttle people back and forth during the day for some sun and sand.  Luckily for us we are coming in at the end of the day, and the last of the day boats leaves about 10 minutes after we get there, so for about an hour our small group of people basically has the beach to ourselves as the day is ending.  Mrs. Columbus and I walk the full extent of the beach, and at one end it wraps around the island and and we are totally alone – it is hard to describe the tranquility you feel when you can look around 360 degrees and see no people, just ocean, beach, and jungle.  A great end to a great day.

As we return to the marina and start to make our way back to our hotel, Mrs. Columbus and I both mention that we are very glad we took the tour, and reflect that it is quite possibly the best tour we have been on so far in the south.  I guess the lesson learned is to truly not judge a book by it’s cover.

I blame it either on the proximity of the beach, or that we are nearing the end of our trip, but we have really slowed the pace down even further – I think we may actually be going in reverse now, as it seems like the plants are growing faster than we are actually moving 🙂

Our standard routine here in Kata has mostly been: wake up late and go for breakfast, hang out at/in the pool reading and lounging about, have a small discussion about whether we should do something, draw no conclusion, walk to the Red Chair for dinner, walk home, go to bed – repeat.

We have encountered a small bit of weather here, and it has rained a bit on a couple of days that we can try and blame our lack of activity on (but really that is even a stretch) but by and large we have once again seemed to fair well against the ‘rainy season’.

I guess it will be back to reality too soon, so we are just going to enjoy it while it lasts.

My grandfather used to say ‘Nothing stranger than people’ – it was kind of a whimsical comment when he said it, but if you ponder it a bit it is true on so many levels.

Coming to an international destination like Thailand and spending some time just watching people on the beach provides such a wide view of various people and cultures, and can provide hours of entertainment.  I’m sure we provide some chuckle value to others, and certainly American tourists have lots of their own flaws in the international travel arena – like talking louder and slower to people that don’t speak English, in the hopes that that may help them understand.

I have to give some of these people at the beach full credit for being bold enough to do and wear the things they do, but it really ends there with the notion of of the credit.  There should be some sort of law or restriction about who can wear what out in public – that goes for both men and ladies, and the rule needs to include a scale that changes with age.  I have seen things on the beach that brought a smile to my face, and things that made me want to rinse my eyes with bleach.

Mrs. Columbus and I went down to the beach last night to watch the sunset and had to watch some girl probably in her late 20s of some sort of eastern European heritage prance in the waves.  This in itself is not noteworthy as there are 100s of people at the beach doing the same.  What made this like a train wreck that you could not look away from, was that her and her choice of bikini was really like 5 pounds of Jello stuffed into a 3 pound bag.  In addition to the garment being waaaay too small, the bottom bit was somehow loose, so every time she frolicked in the waves, said garment moved farther down her backside – and I had to wonder if perhaps she was a plumber in her home country.

Fortunately for us the train wreck moved on, and we were still able to enjoy our sunset, but it was just one more experience of the sort of things you can see when people are being – well, people.

We moved from Bang Tao to Kata a couple of days ago, and there is definitely a different pace going on here.  Bang Tao was very quiet, part of that is the layout – as I mentioned before it is not really a town, mostly just a strip of hotels, and not necessarily all that close together, so walking around there can be quite quiet and peaceful.  Kata is one of the 3 main beach towns on Phuket, and the difference is obvious, there is a lot more going on here even tho it is the low season, and the town and beach are quite busy – it feels like they are even busier than perhaps when we were here last year (even though everyone says tourism is down because of the protests earlier in the year) – shrug, go figure!?

We have not really done much since we got here except hang out by the pool 🙂  We did walk down to the beach for about an hour or so when we got here, and did do a bit of exploring today, but Mrs Columbus was drawn back in by the cool refreshing pool so we spent the afternoon lazing about.  We did walk down to the Red Chair for dinner as it was a favorite of ours from last year (someone recommended it to my parents on their first trip here).  The food is fantastic, and like last year we ordered a ton of food – Spring Rolls, Phad Thai, Chicken with Cashew nut, a Thai omelet, rice and 3 drinks all for just under $9US!! When it is good and cheap you just can’t do anything but walk away stuffed and happy.

We are thinking about walking down to Karon Beach tomorrow (it is about 8km) so that will be a nice long walk along the coast (unless the sun is beating down) but we will have to see how we feel in the morning – it really adds to the relaxation to feel no need to maintain any sort of fixed agenda.  I will enjoy it while it lasts 🙂