2018 "Song of India" Adventure - Day 7 - Phuket Island, Thailand
Day 7
– Monday, February 26th – Phuket Island, Thailand
(Allan
writing) Wow! 5:45 sure comes early when you’ve been on vacation for over a
week J. I woke up after getting about 6 hours of sleep, turned off
my alarm, had just closed the bathroom door (with me inside) when the door was
knocked on. It was our room service order for 6:00 AM, slightly early. After
the attendant left I came out to find several dishes stacked on the small
coffee table in front of the small couch in our cabin: eggs fried over-hard
(for me), omelet (for Steve), fruit, croissants, juices, and coffee. Our
standard room service breakfast. All the food was fresh and still pretty warm –
lovely!
We finished
breakfast quickly, dressed, then made our way with bags for cameras, water,
etc. down to the main theater on deck 4. We filed into the queue to get our
tender tickets and sat down to wait our turn. This was to be the only tender
port on this trip which was nice, as everything is generally slowed down quite
a bit when you have to ferry a couple of thousand passengers back and forth to
shore. We didn’t have to wait long, and soon we were on our way to a very nice
boat that had been hired by the ship to be used as a tender in this port. Once
onboard, Steve wanted to sit upstairs and I said sure, so we went out the aft
side and up the stairs on either side to a covered area with well-cushioned
seating and got comfortable. Our new friends Gregg and Richard joined us and we
were all excited for our day in beautiful Phuket.
The air was
quite warm and humid as it’s been for this whole trip so far, but it was still
very early in the morning and with the wind as we came ashore it was just heavenly! I took a terrific shot of our
ship – the Celebrity Constellation, from about 200 meters away and it’s like a
postcard shot (Steve just told me he already posted this picture of the ship in
the Day 5 entry). I rather wish that this short boat ride had been a bit
longer, it was so pleasant, but it was not to be. We were not that far from
shore to begin with so the ride was only about 7 minutes to the pier. We all
filed out of the boat and sort of milled about a bit and took a few shots of
the colorful “tail boats” lined up on the beach by the pier. They made for a
very interesting photographic subject, reminding me quite a bit of the boats
you see in Venice, Italy they use in the canals. (SW: Except for the fact that these boats had outboard motors that were
canted toward the stern, with a big long pole connected to the propeller. This way,
the boat could navigate very shallow waters.)
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| Tail boats, Patong Beach, Thailand |
Our tour guide
for the day was a lovely Thai woman named Rose. She was very sweet, spoke very
good English with a fairly heavy accent, but still easy to understand. We headed
out of town, moving north through Phuket Island toward the mainland. Rose
introduced herself and told us about our itinerary and some basic facts about
Thailand and its people. We found out that we’d be visiting Wat Suwan Khuha, or
Wat Tam as the locals call it. This is a Buddhist temple inside a limestone
cave, with an enormous statue of the reclining Buddha occupying a large portion
of the cave. There would also be fairly large monkeys at the cave site that
live in small holes in the rock wall outside the cave. After that we would
proceed to Phang Nga Bay.
I think we were
on the road for about 35 – 45 minutes before we reached Wat Tam. We all got off
the bus and shuffled along a dirt road that led through a series of vendor’s
stalls, hawking all sorts of goods and foodstuffs. We had no local currency
with us, which we would come to regret later, and walked through the vendors,
heading to the cave site. First there was a pit stop in a fairly wretched
public toilet, but you just breathed through your mouth and you were OK. (SW: These toilets were seriously gross, only
enhanced by the sound of someone vomiting a few stalls away).
The cave looked
like one of the limestone “mountains” that we would see in the bay soon enough,
maybe 50 meters tall on the outside, with vegetation and even some small trees
growing out of the limestone on the outside. We wanted to see the monkeys first
and were lucky to see three of them carefully accepting food from the tourists –
slowly, and with care. I was fortunate to get some great video of this to share
here:
After relishing
the monkeys, we went inside the cave and meandered about. There were large
openings in the cave on two sides, and stairs had been chiseled into the rock
in various places, with small shrines placed on either side of the stairs
halfway up the side of the cave (to the right of the main entrance). In one
place toward the front of the cave, there was a sign proclaiming that various
Siamese and Thai Kings had visited this holy place and had carved their marks
into the side of the inside of the cave (Royal graffiti).
The golden
statue of the reclining Buddha was very impressive, and we would come to learn
more about the symbolism of this in a series of lectures on the ship about the
history, and meaning of Buddhism.
We stayed here
for about 45 minutes and then walked back out to meet the bus toward the
entrance to the site. We drove for about another hour before we reached Phang
Nga Bay. Rose told us on
the way that one of Thailand’s primary exports in the past was rubber. We passed
many groves of rubber trees on the way to our destination. Rubber is still a
primary export, but tourism is now their number one business activity (at least
in the area we were visiting).
It was quite hot
and humid and somewhat hazy when we reached the bay. We gathered our bags and
headed toward a long, wide boat that would be our vessel for the journey to “James
Bond Island”. This island was one of the main filming locations for the Bond
film “The Man with the Golden Gun”, made in 1974. The island and the
surrounding bay (Phang Nga) was designated as a national park in 1981.
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| Our tour boat. The life jackets were for decoration only. |
The boat ride
was to be roughly 2 hours long. The breeze was most welcome as we left the pier
and joined the many other long boats and the very noisy tail boats that
inhabited the bay. We passed by one limestone formation that contained a series
of ancient(?) cave drawings in what looked like blood. The color was definitely
that rusty red color we’ve seen before – at the Mayan ruins of Tulum in Mexico
for sure.
The only wildlife we saw were a beautiful species of hawk, a reddish-brown
color with light tan or golden heads, about the size of American Bald Eagles,
soaring lazily near one of the mountains, trying to catch a thermal updraft.
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| With low tide, the canoeists enjoyed this amazing experience |
The rest of the
ride was actually pretty uneventful. We came upon the island and while it was
kind of interesting, it was swarming with tourists.
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| "James Bond Island", Phang Nga Bay, Thailand |
We just motored around it
and took some photos, and then moved on to our last stop in the bay: a Muslim
village that had been settled on a half-acre of land several hundred years ago
and had spread as a village built on stilts on the water. Three hundred
families lived there and we got out to walk around a bit, see the village, and
the mosque that was the first building built in the oldest section of the
village.
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| Muslim village, Phang Nga Bay, Thailand |
It was beastly
hot when we docked and we were all quite tired and hungry. The village was kind
of interesting and we did walk past the primary school and the children were
all very cute in their uniforms (different styles for different grades). Some
were at lessons, others were having nap time on mats on the floor. (SW: While no pigs were allowed, neither were
dogs. Only sleepy cats curled up in the shade).
We shuffled back
to the pier and waited for our boat to get its turn to come up aside and tie
up. Getting on and off this boat was a bit of a challenge for many in our
group: you had to climb over a railing and swing your legs over. No small feat
for some. (SW: And I gashed my leg on
boarding and was bleeding. Luckily, Allan had not only napkins, but a moist
towlette to clean the mess up. The
bleeding stopped, but it looks nasty.)
(Steve writing) Once back in the boat we
were on our way back to have a late-ish lunch at a “resort” near where we
boarded. The resort had set up a number of tables on a large covered patio on
the waterfront. There were many dishes available, mostly fish-based but some
with chicken. Several of the other groups had gotten there before us, but there
was plenty of food to go around, even if it wasn’t still hot. It just felt good
to have a bite to eat.
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| Hungry tourists devouring local cuisine |
Back on the bus
we went, and it was a two-hour drive back to Patong Beach. The roads were in
very good shape, and it would be easy to drive as the signage was in both Thai
and English. But there were some nasty traffic bottlenecks, as well as the ever-present
scooters on the shoulders. Our driver honked more than once at a few that
strayed into our lane.
The backside of
the town of Patong Beach was not pretty. Lots of stores crammed together, all
with an eye out for foreign tourists. In one section of town, I saw Hebrew
lettering. In another section, plenty of Cyrillic writing. And always the
seemingly out of place 7-11 store (they really do look alike everywhere in the
world). By the time we alighted from the bus, my butt was numb. It was a day of
too much sitting.
We got on the
next-to-last tender back (a full half-hour after the supposed “last tender”)
and in less than fifteen minutes we were back aboard the Constellation. We
headed immediately to the Café Il Bacio for some cold refreshments, and then
back to our cabin to rest. As the ship pulled away from its anchorage, we saw
the Genting
Dream heading into the bay. Genting is the third-largest cruise company in
the world, based in Hong Kong. It caters mainly to the burgeoning Chinese
market. The ship’s design wasn’t so dreamy: too many decks of balcony cabins
and the smokestack crowded with a rear deck coming too close and too high. But I’m
sure it’s interesting on the inside.
After a
lie-down, we headed down to Blu for dinner. We ended up sitting next to another
gay couple, Bobby and Michael, from Phoenix. They ended up being delightful
company, and the food was long gone before we left the restaurant together.
The long day
finally came to a close, and we both enjoyed a solid night’s sleep. Now for two
relaxing days at sea…
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