Day 43, Fri May 31 - Visiting 007 at home?

An action packed day today, pick up at 10 by our tour guide Kim (popular name over here) and off to the mainland to visit the Monkey Cave at Suwankuha Temple, lots of monkeys, and quite an impressive reclining Buddha but after the Monkey Cave at Cat Ba in Vietnam this one just didn't measure up.

    Just one of the troupe of monkeys

    The Reclining Buddha

Back in the minibus and off to the pier  at Phang Nga, a lovely boat ride through the Phang Nga National Park.  Beautiful scenery and quite fun to be racing along in the Long Tail Boat, another mode of transport to add to the list.

  Not our boat but an identical Long Tail Boat

   The lucky travellers

Our first stop on the boat was to Koh Pan-Yee the Muslim floating fishing village and restaurants where we were treated to a very substantial lunch, in fact the most choice of vegetarian food Kim and Les have had the whole holiday.  

   This one speaks for itself....

   Les at the Muslim fishing village

Then it was off to Ta-Phu the Eye of the Crab Island, otherwise know as James Bond Island, which was made famous in 1975 with the making of 007 The Man with the Golden Gun with Roger Moore.  Actually it is a very small Island and not that spectacular but some of the surrounding karsts and islands are beautiful.  

   Our tour guide Kim took this for us - he's obviously done this before.

   Kim preventing the leaning rock of Bond!

We had a lovely half hour on the island and then enjoyed another hour cruising through the National Park and back to the pier for a transfer to the minibus and back to Phuket Island and our Hotel. 

   One of many amazing shots of the day

A full day from 10 am to 6pm for around $35 each was good value.  Once back "at home" it was time for a sunset swim for Brent and Les.  Kim and Russell opted for a cool shower!  Then off in search of food.  We had decided that as it wasn't a BBQ night at the Halfway Inn we'd go and see if Nan could rustle up a good vegetarian red curry?  She assured Kim she could and we waited with baited breath until the GREEN curry arrived.....hmmmm lost in translation maybe.  Never mind we all enjoyed our meal and host Dave was very chatty and so it was a good night.

The intrepid four feel that maybe we are getting a bit soft, it has only taken a week, and a day out has got us whacked!  Time for an early night! The plan for tomorrow is to hire a couple of motorbikes and do a bit of free sightseeing.  More on that tomorrow.