'Round Phuket

Koh Panyi (Muslim fishing village on stilts)

After returning the rental car, the second part of Nana's visit was spent taking Perry around to some of the local anchorages. We are still getting used to how tourist-y everything is here. And there are a lot of other boats, especially charters. As soon as you put down your anchor, a charter boat plunks down nearby (many times very nearby), then another and another.

Soccer with the kids at Koh Payni

Charter boats stick out because they are often packed with passengers and are, if not run by professional crew, typically newbies in the anchoring department. One chartered catamaran anchored and then proceeded to motor forward in a circle around its anchor about five times. For those of you who aren't familiar with anchoring, you typically back up to check that your anchor is holding. Motoring forward in a circle just provides a funny show for onlookers, like a dog chasing its tail. We think the captain may have forgotten to take the boat out of gear. I'm sure we did stupid things when we first got our boat, but I can't remember them. And as far as you know they never happened...

Koh Payni is a Muslim fishing village on stilts. Although scenic, it is much more tourist-oriented than the other floating villages we have visited, including this one in Brunei, which was more of a working fishing village. You can buy an overpriced meal (there are multiple restaurants that seem to seat hundreds) and souvenirs. Although most sites recommend that you dress modestly because it is a Muslim village, most of the tourists seem to either ignore or be unaware of that advice.

The towering karsts provided a dramatic back-drop to our anchorages

Approaching James Bond Island (Koh Tapu)

We visited James Bond Island but couldn't land because we didn't bring enough money with us to pay the entrance fee. We did dinghy around the island. That evening, we watched The Man with the Golden Gun, which features the island. The kids had never seen a Bond movie before and I had kind of wished their first one would be a Sean Connery. Matt keeps sneaking in and editing this post to add, 'At least it wasn't Timothy Dalton...' and I keep taking it out because I happen to like Timothy Dalton as James Bond.

Ko Hong

We made it into the 'bat cave', a hong at Ko Phanak, with the dinghy (rowing). It was interesting to take our dinghy through a cave. It smelled a little like B.O. and we had to speed through a few areas where bats were hanging from the roof so we wouldn't get splashed with guano. We have also visited several other hongs throughout the area, some enclosed and others open like a bay. The one at Ko Roi had a big colony of flying foxes resting in the trees. We haven't seen this many since Fiji.

Swimming isn't the greatest because the water isn't so clear and these big jellyfish are everywhere. Some are huge. But we did get Nana in the water and at least it's warmer than Chicago.

Nana's prepared to survive on her private island