Day 17: Koh Lanta, Hot & Breezy, 31°🌞

An Enjoyable Travel Break!🌴🌴⛱️

As I was saying yesterday, we are approaching the halfway point of this travel. As a matter of fact, my watch tells me that this actually occurs tomorrow. So far our travels have been very rewarding, with many wonderful experiences in Malaysia including a super visit with Linda and David and now we have the opportunity to sample a little of what Thailand has to offer.

The place where we are staying consists of several bungalows, a small pool and a restaurant at the north end of a long sandy beach. It’s located right above the beach where we can cross over a tsunami barrier and swim or walk as the mood strikes.

This morning after a nice breakfast we chose the walking option. We walked down the beach and back, a nice 4,4 km walk. I felt the need for a little more and took another lap. It’s not like it’s a burden…

I mentioned that there were two really good activities that we enjoyed immensely late day that didn’t make it into my blog. An afternoon/evening boat trip and a night market, both just a couple of days ago in Phuket. I’ve decided that I’m going to write about the boat trip first because it was truly special. OMG, I took so many photos!

I’ll start at the beginning. When we were at home sorting out a travel route, I suggested to AM that if we could fit it in that I would really like to see the karst towers and national park north of Phuket. We messed around with various options, and the end of the day we managed to make it work. An extra day in Phuket before coming over to Koh Lanta.

As we were planning in the Cameron Highlands we found a reputable company, but they were fully booked. Added to their cancellation list we looked further, eventually finding 5 Star who seemed to also be reputable. Because we couldn’t pay an upfront fee to book with them using our Visa card (double bank security verification stuff that I won’t bore you with), they worked with us and made arrangements to permit us to pay them when we arrived for the tour. Perfect!

A van picked us up at 13:00 and took us to a secondary harbour…

…where were briefed, shown our fast (very fast) boat and quickly sent on our way. Super nice crew the entire day with lots of water and soft drinks kept in a huge ice box. We picked this late day tour because most go out in the morning and are back by 16:00. The plan was to have most of the usual stops to ‘ourselves’. And it pretty much worked out that way! As usual we were the seniors in the group. Tiresome, but now it’s usually our reality on these sorts of adventures. However, we had zero issues keeping up.🙂

We ran across open water for half an hour, and I eventually took a turn in one of 4 open seats in the bow. Good timing as the island features I’d really come to see were right in front of us. Karst towers. Originally ancient limestone seabeds now uplifted and eroded over time into massive towers. One of geomorphology’s exotic formations. I’d written a paper about them when at graduate school years ago. I followed up on this research in Vietnam in 2007 and now another opportunity!

We stopped briefly to walk through a cave in one of the towers. Because they are made of limestone which is soft and very porous they are subject to chemical and water erosion. This can leave many caves, some of them massive and spectacular. As the land around them eroded, the towers are left and this means that there are often caves very high up. The remains of early man have been found high up in caves in Yunnan Province, China and also in Vietnam. I’ve previously visited these types of cave systems in Vietnam, Croatia, Corsica, Slovenia and now Thailand.

This cave was worth a look, but has been overly disturbed and damaged by human activity (tourism and theft) to be scientifically useful. That said, everyone had fun putting on hard hats and with a torch in hand, walking through the caverns.

Back on board we moved quickly rto our next stop.

We pulled into a place where there were groups of Thai guides waiting to canoe us around in inflatable boats. Two guests and a guide per boat.

We were paddled into three lagoons, each one reached through extremely narrow caves where we had to lay down on our backs. The space depended on the tide level. We managed to slip through all three caves, though I still have a minor scrape on my right knee. It was that tight!

We moved on. We had already had some amazing experiences, but these fellows were just getting underway. We next moved on to Kao Ping Kan. Better known here as James Bond Island.

This was a big part of where The Man With The Golden Gun starring the original and best Bond, Sean Connery. I remember watching it as a kid in Vancouver. We always waited for the next Bond movie! We plan to go home and rewatch it😅.

We stopped at a good spot for swimming off the boat. Diving into that beautiful turquoise, opaque water was a thrill, after they first told us there were no underwater limestone stacks there!! The swim back to the boat took a lot of energy as the tide was running pretty briskly. Those of us who elected to have a refreshing swim finally climbed back on board and we were off again.

Bond and a swim behind us we set off to find dinner.

Our second last stop was at the island of Koh Panyi which is basically a floating fishing village. The population is Muslim (note the golden domes of the temple).

The women of the community put on a wonderful meal for us. These are just a couple of the many dishes they prepared. We feasted!

Several older women of Koh Panyi were fishing off the wharves. I photographed from a distance so as to avoid any potential upset. Usually I ask and am seldom refused, but today I decided to take a more subtle approach.

They were lovely as they walked up the ramp after they finished. The woman on the left was particularly old and wizen. I wanted to help her down the large step coming off the ramp, but I felt that she wouldn’t appreciate my offer. After all, she had just sat fishing on hard boards for the better part of an hour.

We had been waiting for the sunset and darkness before moving on to our final stop.

The last stop of the trip lent its name to our small group tour, The Bio-Luminescence Tour. It was set up to permit people to see the amazing phytoplankton light show after dark. Depending on the time of year the colour will either be white, green or blue. As there was a half moon our hosts decided to back the boat into a cave so that we could get off and witness this phenomenon.

This maneuver was very skillfully undertaken. Really great seamanship! My father would have been impressed.

AM and I witnessed this phenomenon often in the pitch dark when we had a sail boat. We stood back and watched adults turn into children as they kicked the water and splashed each other! It was pretty funny to listen to their fun in the darkness! Once done we started the long trip back to Phuket in the dark. That in itself was quite brilliant as I sat at the very back of the boat watching the white spray flying off to each side as the boat raced through the water.

I think that this was my very favourite experience of the trip, so far.

Time now to go find a beer, watch the sunset and then find dinner somewhere.

Best wishes to our friends Corie and Jim as they set off on an amazing adventure of their own. Africa! Safe travels and I’m already looking forward to your stories!

Cheers!🍻

Geoff🌴🌞⛱️