We chose to go to James Bond Island, as it is much nearer to Khao Lak and because the image of it is such a famous representation of the country.
And so we booked a tour from GetYourGuide and were picked up from our resort in the early hours of the morning the next day.
After about an hour in the minibus, we got on a long-tail boat and sailed through Phang Nga Bay towards the island. With its huge tower karst, it was quite similar to Cheow Lan Lake, which we'd visited four days earlier. To be honest, the scenery of the lake was probably a bit more impressive (and a lot less crowded), but I think if we'd never been to the lake, we would have been really amazed by the bay!
We arrived at the island, and I realised that we were in the spot that has been used in many promotional images for travel companies!
Crossing over to the other side of the island where we left the boat (Khao Phing Kan), we could see Ko Ta Pu!
To be honest, it was smaller than we thought it would be and the area was extremely touristy. But it was still a cool experience to see this iconic landmark of Thailand!
Though the tour we took was called a "James Bond Island tour", there were actually a whole lot of activities still to enjoy after visiting the island.
The first of those activities was going to a floating pier in the long-tail boat and from there, getting on a kayak for a tour of the nearby caves and mangroves. This was a fun way to see the natural beauty of the area and we got some cool pictures in the process!
Our next stop was the floating village of Ko Panyi. This is quite a fascinating place to visit, and very different from other places in Thailand, as it's actually a Muslim village. People from Indonesia settled there in the late 18th century and have built up the floating village, which includes an elaborate mosque and a football field, since then.
The view of the village, with a stunning mountain behind it, is really spectacular to see as you arrive.
Around the other side of the island are lots of buffet-style restaurants, and we stopped at one of them for our lunch, which was included in the tour. Out of the three tours we did during our time in Thailand, I'd say this one definitely had the best food. There were lots of options we could help ourselves to - I had dal with rice, sweet and sour vegetables with noodles and some veggie Pad Thai.
Afterwards, we had some free time to go off and explore the island. Claudio and I had actually seen the floating football field in a travel programme on Chilean TV a couple of years earlier, so it was exciting to step onto it ourselves!
After an hour of free time, we needed to make our way back to the restaurant to meet up with the rest of the group. But there were several nearly identical restaurants on the island, and unfortunately, we weren't able to find the correct one. We spent a long time going through the labyrinth-like streets of the village trying to locate it, but eventually we ended up standing on the pier of the island, waving our arms about until our guide came and found us in the end!
Once we were back in the long-tail boat at last, we took a different route back to the pier, going past a prehistoric rock drawing and some more mangrove forests.
We got back onto dry land, but that wasn't the end of the tour yet. We still had one more place yet to visit on our way back to Khao Lak - the Monkey Temple! It's actually called Wat Suwan Khuha, and was a really interesting place to visit. The temple itself is inside a magnificent cave, and yes, there are a lot of monkeys there!
Overall, it was a long and very full day, but a lot of fun. Being completely honest, I don't think we'd go back to these places if we returned to Thailand in the future, but it was a good experience to visit them.
On another note, I know this post is coming quite late after the previous one, but there's a good reason for that! We've been very busy with something recently, and I'll be writing more about it very soon...
But first, I'll be posting about our trip to the Surin Islands, which was another day full of exciting experiences!
