Friday, Day 69 - Mar 16 - 9am to 6pm, Phuket Island, Thailand

Phuket, with a land area of 215 square miles, is about the same size as Singapore, making it Thailand's largest island. Known as the "Pearl of Thailand” this beautiful retreat offers pristine beaches, lush vegetation, traditional villages, and seascapes of huge limestone pillars that tower over the turquoise waters of Phang-Nga Bay. Apart from tourism, much of the province's wealth derives from tin production, which started back in the 16th century.
One of our favorite places in the world is Bangkok and we have been there five times. We have explored some of the area outside Bangkok, but have not been to any of Thailand’s many beautiful islands. We are playing tourist again today doing one of the all day free ship’s tour.

The ship is scheduled to be docked at 9AM. The meeting time for our tour, “Spectacular Phang Nga Bay” is 8:55AM and the tour is listed as getting back to the ship at 5:40PM with all aboard at 5:30PM. First, let me say that when we picked this tour it was scheduled to leave at 8:15AM, but for some reason the ship’s arrival time changed to 9AM and the tour changed from 7 ½ to 8 ½ hours. This kind of change has happened several times on this cruise.

Actually we don’t get off the ship until about 9:50AM and are on bus #6 of six buses doing the tour so we are already way behind schedule. We have such a late start because it takes about 30 minutes of backing and filling two feet from the pier to get the ship in the right position to set the gangway, something to do with the tide going out.

Finally on the bus, we  drive through several congested areas (Aren't they all in this part of the world?) to the island's north end and then cross to the Thai mainland via the Thep Krasettree Causeway. It takes about two hours with one short rest stop at a gas station where we are encouraged to buy a snack since we will not be at the lunch stop until nearly 3PM! 

 Electrical wiring!

 Spirit Houses

 

Causeway

From there we drive on to Phang Nga National Park and board a wooden, covered motorboat with wooden, park bench type seating for two on each side of a center aisle. The boat is well used but fairly comfortable and easily holds the 29 of us.

We travel down river a short way before entering the bay with its spectacular and seductive limestone scenery. Established in 1981, the park lies in the sheltered, pale, milky-green waters northeast of Phuket Island and is the location of more than 80 awe-inspiring islands. These unique karst formations were created when a collision of great magnitude occurred over 300 million years ago between the Indian subcontinent and mainland Asia. The force of the tectonic plates pushed and rotated what is now Thailand and Malaysia, forcing the limestone above the surface. The resulting karst formations appear like fairy castles out of the sea and they come in all different shapes and sizes, some looking like various animals. Vegetation on the karsts has evolved to withstand long periods of dryness and an almost complete lack of soil. We see flora including palm trees, bamboo and ferns hanging off the vertical rock faces and cascading down the cliffs . The guide tells us that under the trees are wild orchids.

Teddy Bear

Our goal is the small island of Kao Ping-Gan, where part of the James Bond adventure, “The Man with the Golden Gun,” was filmed. Once there we circle the island twice both ways so everyone has a good chance for photos.

There are many boats of all shapes and sizes out seeing the beautiful area. We have time to cruise through magnificent mangrove forests and small grottoes. It is really worth seeing the area.

 Floating food court

Then we visit Koh Panyee, a small island with a picturesque village extending out across the water, resting precariously on small pilings. It is inhabited chiefly by Muslim fishermen who originally migrated from Indonesia. Cut off from the mainland and most modern amenities, their unique culture has existed for more than a hundred years. Over the years it has become a big tourist attraction and it is very crowded. 

Given recent history, it is really no surprise that we encounter a problem! On the way to the village we see one of our group's boats dead in the water. The boatman turns around and goes back to the dead boat. Turns out their engine is dead so the boatmen rope the two boats together and our boat tows the other boat to the village. We are supposed to actually get out and walk around the village, but the dead boat gets tied up to the floating pier and then we are tied to that boat. That means to get out we have to climb from our bouncing boat into the dead bouncing boat and then climb out onto the madly bouncing, floating pier. The other boat's group climbs out onto the pier and head for the village. But when we see what we have to do to get out, we rebel and insist that we go on to lunch.  The tour company can deal with the dead boat as we are not far from the starting point.  From comments made by our tour guide, we deduce that these boat motors dying are a regular occurrence as she says they just ought to fix them once and for all.  This, to us, is another example of Regent buying tours without checking them out themselves.  They deny that they do this but we think that is what has happened.
Stranded Boat

We are the first boat back to the resort. On the way we see another of the six boats dead in the water, but help is on the way for them, so we don’t even stop. The food is good and plentiful. We spend about 30 minutes on lunch, then just as the boat group we left at the village arrives for lunch we leave for the ship. 

There was a planned rest/shopping stop on the way back, but we don’t do it because we are out of time. Our bus is the first back to the ship at 5:30PM but we are not allowed to even walk through the stalls by the ship as the herd us back on board. We are getting very tired of being herded!!  The last of the buses gets back a little after 6PM and we are soon sailing. As crazy as the tour was, it is worth doing because the area is so unique!

We are tired and very glad this is the last port for a few days. Dinner is in the Compass Rose. We eat very lightly since we had lunch so late. Dick has a fish dish that isn’t too impressive. Carolyn has the scallops with the lemon cream sauce, her new favorite dish! From there we head to bed.

The room has been very warm the last few days and we have complained about it regularly since we were in Singapore. Nothing has improved by this evening so Carolyn calls again to remind them we are not happy and have not heard anything. The A/C engineer comes and is full of excuses as to why he can’t do anything to cool the room down. Carolyn has taken pictures of the room thermometer showing the daily reading since we first had the problem out of LA and has proof that they did solve it back in January and should be able to do so again. He leaves saying he will see what he can do. We got a new AC engineer in Singapore and the problem started over again there. While we wait and hope for improvement, Carolyn calls housekeeping for another Vornado fan to get more air moving. The second fan shows up and helps some and we are able to sleep.