Friday

Ko Phang Ngan Paradise

We jumped on a boat and watched the beautiful sunset as we putted off towards Ko Phang Ngan island.
We stayed in the cheapest room of one of the more expensive hotels. We had amazing views of the beach from our hammock on the porch.
And killer ocean views from the swimming pool.



So we kicked back and relaxed. We enjoyed the beautiful sunsets,


read good books,
snorkeled in the shallow waters,
paddled in the pool (watching a storm roll in!),
and explored the island by scooter.


Flooding and Khao Sok National Park

The sky looked ominous... monsoon rains were bound to wet us a little. At first we were optimistic that it wouldn't rain but we ended up heading back to the room to pick up the umbrella and rain coat. I had the rain coat, Rob had the umbrella and off we sent into Khoa Sok National Park, one of the beautiful Thai rainforests.












Many touts outside the town (including our cheeky hotel guy) tried to tell us we needed a guide, an expensive guide, to walk with us and protect us from the lions and tigers and bears (oh my). The people within the tourist center within the park assured us that, although there are tiger and wild elephants in the park we were safe to walk on our own. So we did.








Shortly after visiting our first, rather disappointing waterfall (the ones we saw in the other national park in Phang Nga were just so good) the rain started to fall. The river already looked swollen from previous rains but we didn't expect it to be so heavy and keep going and going etc.








We were drenched aaaand we provided a few meals to the local leeches along the way.








Finally, we were defeated by a raging river that just could not be crossed safely due to the heavy rainfall. We were just happy that we were on the home side of the river!!




Although wet we did enjoy our walk. It was quite the adventure and the forest looks beautiful when it's wet.








The adventure didn't stop there. Later that night the river kept growing and growing. Our hotel was on the side of the bridge that meant that, if it collapsed, we may be stuck in Khao Sok for longer than planned. Our hotel room flooded and we were upgraded to a higher, newer room.




Apparently this type of flooding only started occurring after a wealthy developer a put in some poorly placed bridges.... Hopefully the town can sort things out before more damage is done.




Early the next morning we left town. The last photo below shows the remain bridge that we were able to cross to leave town.










Thursday

James Bond and other islands

There are so many tours you can do as a tourist in Thailand and whilst we didn't want a trip to be one endless tour, we did do a few. This one went through a national park that was mostly made up of mangroves so the tour vehicle was a long boat. There were a number of sites along the way so plug your ears (the boat was noisy) and just aboard.

This is the kind of boat we were on.





We were seated a few rows back. Our fellow travelers were really nice but the boat was too noisy to strike up any real conversations. But we still had fun on our own.



The first part of the trip took us through passages of mangroves and then opened out into this:







A whole bunch of jaggerty islands popping out of the water. Some of these island had been eroded away leaving 'water caves' for us to journey through.







Rob loved it!



We stopped in at one of the islands. This one was famous for being in a James Bond movie. It was pretty much a few big rocks separated by a small beach. There is also a rock that protrudes out of the water a short distance from the beach. I think this was part of the movie. I could imagine one of the bonds speeding around it in an expensive boat.

Below are some pics of and on the island.










We jumped on board again and cruised past some beautiful rock art. Many of the caves are home to swallows. These are the swallows that make their nests out of their spit. These nests are in turn harvested by humans and sold (by weight for as much as silver) for eating and, I think, medicinal purposes.





The last stop was a Muslim fishing village. Some of it was built on a small sliver of land, but most of it was suspended over the water on stilts. It even had big a mosque (see the left side of the pic below).





Dreamy Phang Nga National Park

This has got to be one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. I'm so glad we hired a scooter and putted our way out to this magical national park. The water cascaded through the beautiful forest, past big old roots and lush greenery. If it hadn't been so rainy in the subsequent days, a second visit would have been on the cards.
Enjoy the pics!