Swiftly following the morning’s sailing/kayaking and lunch-time gluttony (if you missed that – check out part 1 of this post – which has been split to two parts due to having lots of photos), my friends and I (who must have put on quite a few pounds from lunch alone) headed off to the next and perhaps the most famous spot on our tour – James Bond Island!
So off we set, weaving through many beautiful islands…
Till we arrived at James Bond Island! Our boat couldn’t actually get to the island so we had to stop a fair distance away and hop aboard smaller boats to get to the island.
James Bond Island is actually officially called Khao Phing Kan however due to the island being featured in the 1974 James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun it’s usually informally referred to as James Bond Island by locals and tourists alike.
I know I may have told you think before but getting off that boat was a tad embarrassing for me. I had made my way to the front of the boat where I was gonna hop onto the dry beach and just as I leapt, a lady on the beach decided to change her mind about where she was going and appeared right on my reserved jumping spot. What ensued as a rather embarrassing collision of me (with my extra lunch weight) with the woman in the most unfashionable manner possible – complete with high pitched yelps!
She got the worst of it though which left me to deal with the guilt (and her with the discomfort). Luckily, we both made our apologies hastily and I scampered off hoping to not bump into her again. I soon realised when I walked up the stairs however that everyone else had seen our little incident and had/were-still-having a good old giggle. I can be quite clumsy, I know but this was supposed to be James Bond Island – I feel like I left the team down with what was supposed to be a super cool (and perhaps even suave) disembarkment off the boat onto the island…
Anyway, back to the island! So, the most famous sight on the island is Ko Tapu which is tall and thin limestone rock about 20 metres (66 ft) tall with the diameter increasing from about 4 metres (13 ft) (thanks wikipedia for the actual dimensions). The point is, Ko Tapu looks too tall and too think to actually be standing (yet it is!).
I may have taken quite a few photos of Ko Tapu by the way… 🙂
We decided to explore the island a lot more and clambered up a path up the hills and through what I could call a ‘light forest’….
….when we happened upon a beach at the other end of the island.
We decided to stick around here for a bit. 🙂
Finally we made our way back to the other part of the island (which takes all of 3 minutes to get to) and stopped by in the markets…
We also went about exploring some caves on the island…
…and then board our small boat to take us back to the main boat.
Back on the main boat, we headed for our final stop – a little beach for a bit of swimming, more chilling out or splashing around (totally dependent on the individual) and the final bit of kayaking of the day (at this point, we were free to take the reigns of the kayak and paddle to the beach)!
We came across lots of other visitors stopping off at different islands, even saw some sea eagles and took a few mandatory facebook photos to send back home.
Check out the dramatic rainclouds in the distance. The weather on this day was such a mixed bag! Rain, sun, rain, heavy rain, sun… It was as unpredictable as the UK but it was very VERY warm so the weather changes made no difference. Plus, for the most part, it didn’t actually rain when we had something to do (asides that bit for a few minutes on Hong Island)
I thought this boat was driven by itself with no one on it. I realised after about 30 minutes that there was a guy on it with a chair on his head (for some reason). I really need to get my glasses sorted out soon!
Finally, we arrived at the beach and had such a whale of a time here I actually stopped taking photos at this point. (I think I even left my camera on the boat).
And there you have it! After this point, we headed back to Phuket mainland while drinking and eating some more on the way in.
N.B.: Now you can probably see why I had to split the posts into two. There’s no way I could have fit all of this into the first part of this post! 🙂
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