Thailand 2012 - Day 6

Day 6 Phuket

Wednesday 2012/04/04

Our James Bond Island tour was due to leave at 10 and with thunder and lightening in the sky (but only light rain) we went back up to the room after breakfast only to get a call 15 mins early to say our transport was here. There was only a couple of other pickups before we were on our way. We had to travel off the island of Phuket and onto the mainland to a port in the east, this took over an hour and a half.
By this time it was still overcast and very warm (32) and humid, but no rain.
When we got there our long boat was waiting. It took about 20 minutes to get to the caves where Judy did the canoe ride, then back in the long boat to James Bond island.
Our guide was looking after grandma and had her sit right up the front for when we landed on the beach. We saw the tilting rock first and then you walk across the island all 20 paces and there it was, the rock formation almost as famous as Ularu. Some time for photos then it was back in the boat to a Muslim village for lunch.
A lot of the buildings for the village were built on stilts over the water. Traditional Thai lunch which we shared with a Thai family from Bangkok. It gave them a good chance for their son to practice his English. After lunch there was time for a bit of shopping before it was back into the long boat to return to port.
Once back on our bus there was one last destination, to see the reclining Buda in a cave, these buda's are very rare and both it and the cave were huge. While we were waiting to get back on the bus some monkeys came down the cliff face above the entrance to the cave to eat bananas and corn given to them by tourists.
All aboard the bus for the hour and a half ride home. The driver got up to 130kph on some stretches, there were strategically placed speed humps as a way of controlling traffic, but anything goes including weaving from right to left doing a u turn in front of oncoming traffic and if your on a motorbike even riding the wrong way. But everyone seems to get along, certainly no road rage here.
We got home about 6:30pm had a shower then out for a light tea at a little place down the road that we'd found before.
Back to the hotel by 8:30, buggered!

Long Boat

Canoeing

James Bond Island

Musilum Villiage

Reclining Budda