Thailand, part 2: Phang Nga and Ao Phang Nga National Park

Phang Nga town
The area around the town of Phang Nga has gorgeous limestone hills, some of which form the islands of Ao Phang Nga National Park, and we wanted to see this area at a leisurely pace.  We took a bus from Phuket and found a really cheap room and a local tour guide in the town.

Looks like a prison, but it was clean and had a pretty roof deck.

Posing on the roof

The the town, being fairly rural and not hugely popular with travelers, had shockingly low prices compared to Phuket.

"Only 20 baht?"

Trying to illustrate "drain plug" in a shop.  They didn't carry it.

We arrived in the afternoon and had time to visit a local temple that had a view of the landscape.  The temple had statuary illustrating souls in heaven and in hell; I didn't think it would be appropriate to photograph them but believe me that they were quite convincing.

Climbing up to the view

After seeing the temple grounds we took a motorcycle taxi back to town and found a restaurant at which a lot of families were eating.  It didn't disappoint.

A little bit hair-raising

Delicious!  The food in the Phuket and Phang Nga 

areas was pretty light on salt and spice, letting the

main ingredients speak for themselves.

The next day we met the longtail boat and headed out into the bay.

Leaving the dock

Through a labyrinthine mangrove swamp.  We saw a lot of

crabs and a lizard swimming.

Is that a cave?

Yes we just drove through a cave

The limestone formed strange stalactites

Our guide then took us out into the open waters of the bay, where in every direction we saw gorgeous cliffs and hazy islands.

The bay

Passing Ko Panyi, a town on stilts built out from the cliff

Obligatory picture at "James Bond Island", the set of

Scaramanga's hideout in The Man with the Golden Gun.

We even stopped inside a cave and explored inside.

It was beautiful, one of the highlights of the day.

Lunch on a tiny beach while the captain napped in the boat

Min loves to photograph me taking photographs.  It's very meta.

The technical term for the geology is drowned karstland.  Wherever the water met the rock of a cliff, the waves had undercut the cliff and there were often stalactites hanging.

Staying at Ko Panyi

At the end of the day, the captain dropped us off to spend the night on Ko Panyi, a tiny village built out on stilts from one of the islands in the bay.  The people of the town are Muslim, and they didn't allow dogs or pigs in the village.  There were a lot of cats though.  We stayed in a little bungalow above the water, and we had a few hours to walk around the village and meet people.  The village has been shaped by tourism, but most tourists stop only for a few hours during lunch so we got a different view with most of the souvenir shops and restaurants closed or empty.  We talked with a woman who was fishing off the dock with her young daughter, and we watched some of the men play a game called takraw.  Children flew kites off the docks.

Everyone got around in longtail boats, from big fast ones

to tiny one-person boats.

Looking out from the door of our room.  What a pleasant spot!

People flying kites on the pier

Men playing takraw

The setting was just gorgeous

Canon 10-22@14mm, 120s, f/9, 10-stop ND filter

Sunset

Canon 10-22@22mm, 30s, f/9

The one disappointing event at Ko Panyi village was meeting a woman who had a pet gibbon and offered to let us take a picture with it for ฿50.  The local gibbons are endangered because people catch them as pets, often for attracting tourists, and none live in the wild anymore.  There is a gibbon rehabilitation project nearby in Phuket that tries to prepare gibbons for return to the wild.

Min and I were both sad to leave the village in the morning.  Everyone had been friendly and the community seemed very close.

Heading out to the long-tail boat back to town

Up next: Phetchaburi