26th Sept 2012
We arrive at the bus station, to be met by a lady selling tickets to Phang Nga. We have learned over our months of travel, that they rush you, like the bus is about to leave, so you panic slightly and buy a ticket off the first person you speak to. So we purchase our ticket for 80B and wait 30 minutes or so! When it arrives we are rushed over to it, there are no seats left. When Matt says to the driver, 'No seats?' he nods and shows us to the back door, where points to some floor space, which already has several Thia's sprawled out in the space! Bearing in mind we have our rucksack and day-bags, we don't think there will enough space for us! We tell the driver we will wait for the next bus, he shrugs his shoulders, like we are mad and drives off, probably thinking, 'Bloody tourists!". The next bus arrives 15 minutes later with plenty of spare seats for our one and a half hour journey.
We arrive in Phang Nga in the pouring rain!
Find a guest house, pretty quickly, (we discount the Thawisuk Hotel, that is suggested in the Lonely Planet, - what a shit-hole!). It would seem all of the hotels in Phang Nga are budget rooms, well all of the one's we looked at! We book into the Phang Nga guest house for 1 night and have the most expensive room! (12.80p) It has air-con, hot water and a full size fridge. We hope to do our boat trip from here, as the weather was to wet in Ao Nang. We go and purchase 2 umbrella's and 2 poncho's as the rain is so heavy!
Whilst we are wondering up the High Street, we see a sign for a 'hidden gem' guest house, up a side street. (We are getting quite nosy now and just look at rooms, because......we can!). So we find the guest house at the top of the dead-end road, beneath yet another limestone cliff. It has 6 rooms, is very quiet and only 2 years old. We do a deal with the young owner. The room should be 800B but I ask if he will do a deal if we stay for 3 nights, 700B including breakfast! We will move in the morning!
Basically, it rains virtually solidly for 3 days. We make the most of our outdoor seating area, although sometimes the rain is so hard, we have to go in, as the wind is blowing the rain sideways!
We have an extremely wet walk to the weirdest place - 'Hell and Heaven Cave'! The cave was actually flooded (surprisingly!), but the grotesque figures and murder scenes were something else! There were plenty of wild monkeys to look at, when you couldn't cope with the gore anymore!!
We also passed a shabby-chic bar/restaurant 'Nanghong', and promised ourselves we would return (when we were dry,) to this wooden hut over the river. We did go back the next night. It was so quirky. Built on different levels, all in wood, with various odd collections of old clocks, number-plates, radio's and the light-fittings were made out of beer bottles. Everything in there needed a good dust, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. The food was some of the best we had had, produced from a tiny kitchen. The only thing that Matt wasn't happy about, was the ice in his beer!
On our 4th day, we decide the boat-trip has to be done, we can sit around no longer! Fortunatley, the weather is a bit brighter, so we go down to see 'Mr Kean' the tour operator. He has 4 other people who want to do the trip. We all pile into a pick-up - 3 in the cab and 3 in the back! It is drizzling slightly, Mr Keans tells us it's not far, about 15 minutes later, we arrive at the boat!!
The boat is a traditional 'longtail' boat, our (fisherman) boatman doesn't seem to speak any english, other than - 'James Bond' - we are visisting the island where Man with the Golden Gun was filmed and, 'Dog' - but even this he had to making barking noises for us to understand - there is a rock, that apparently (if you have a very good imagination) looks like one!
We also went to a Muslim Fishing Village, unfortunately, it looks like tourism has got the better of them and the village, built in stilts out into the water, is full of tiny houses, all selling the same or similar trinkets and food. Some of the old dears almost begging you to buy from them, this we do not enjoy, so after a quick walk around and watching a group of youngsters playing in the water, we head back to the boat.
All in all, we had a good 3 and a half hours out on the boat (it cost us 500B each -10.00p) and the weather was kind to us. It is starting to brighten, at last, so back to our room to try and dry our things, before moving on to Khao Lak tomorrow!
