An hour on the bus, up hill and down dale brought us to Manora Garden, a B&B set in a small rubber plantation, just outside Phang Nga, complete wi5 monkeys in the rafters!
We borrowed a scooter, much to Chris’s delight and my trepidation, to go 2,800kms … oops 2.5kms … up the road to the local waterfall and nature trail. It was busy with minibuses full of tourists, paddling in the waterfall, so we tried to escape and head for the trail, but I found the stepping stones over the river too scary to contemplate so we retraced our steps. Chris says it was worth it just for the scooter ride!
The main reason we are here is so we can spend my birthday on a boat round the western side of Ao Phang Nga, the huge bay protected by Phuket from the Andaman Sea. Despite being to far away from friends and family, it was lovely to receive so many birthday greetings as well as a gift from Gerard and Nui at Manora.
We were warned that boat trips in the bay are hardly solitary experiences, as all the tourists want to see the same bits, so I was expecting it to be busy, so I certainly wasn’t expecting a longtail boat to ourselves complete with picnic. The other surprise was how vast the bay is and apart for a few ‘hotspots’ we felt we had the bay to ourselves.
We boarded our boat at am ramshackle dock and were off.
The highlight for us was our visit to Ko Hong, which contains hongs which translate from Thai as rooms and are lagoons hidden inside the limestone. We were taken by kayak into the tunnels, glimpsing one lagoon beyond our reach, but were able to enter another. Whilst there were other people kayaking too, we still enjoyed the experience, had a joke with our boatman and posed for photos!
We also stopped at Ko Tapu or Nail Rock, famous as Scaramanga’s hideaway in The Man with the Golden Gun, and now more commonly referred to as James Bond Island. We could have landed to get the iconic photo of the rock from the other side, but decided not to brave the crowds.
Other stops took us to cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites and a lagoon at the end, and another with very colourful formations.
We also passed some 3,000 year old cave paintings, now exposed on the outside of a cliff and rocks apparently resembling a poodle dog, but we are really struggling to see the similarity!
For lunch we stopped at an island with its own private beach where we swam, ate a delicious fried rice lunch followed with bananas, played on the swing and took pics till it was time to go … idyllic!
Our return took us to Ko Panyi, a Muslim village built on stilts around a rock that supports the mosque, which has apparently grown from descendants of two seafaring families from Java. The reality is that many of the large boats stop here for lunch so it has become a huge tourist bazaar and we couldn’t believe that enough tourists would visit to ever be able to seriously deplete their stock!
The ride back was exhilarating and we were covered in spray as we headed back to Phanh Nga, tired and happy.
Tomorrow we take the bus to Krabi to meet up with a very important person!
In just a morning we swapped a jungle paradise for a beach paradise! Ko Kho Khao, meaning Neck Mountain Island, is just a short ferry ride from the mainland, on some of the smallest but most colourful vehicular ferries I’ve ever seen.
and a restaurant …
Well we opted for the flights – who wouldn’t when you could fly in a plane with a beak!
Contrasting with the speed, noise and spray from a longtail boat was our sedate canoe ride along the Sok river one morning. The scenery changed at ever turn, and we stopped halfway for a coffee break, brewed up over a small fire on the bank. We were hoping to see kingfishers, but maybe they had already been fishing as all we caught was a couple of glimpses of iridescent blue as they flew past although we did see a frog … a tree frog perhaps!
Chiang Rai, 200km north, may have history and even some wats, but we arrived to go trekking and left more impressed with the contemporary art.
We stopped for a rest in a village where Lahu and Akha tribes live …
We timed our stay to catch the Flower Festival which began with a two hour parade round the outside of the old centre, ending in a park where the floats could be admired close up and there was an orchid display and street market. We just took so many pictures of the fabulous floats, together with school bands and people in traditional costumes. Some of the large figures are covered in coloured rice, and a few of the flowers were dried and dyed, but most were fresh using a lot of chrysanthemums and orchids and the effect was stunning.
Doing a cookery class has become a regular feature on our trips since our very first class in Bangkok in 2009 and we spent a great day at Thai Farm. We started with a quick market tour and also a look round their organic garden at various herbs and vegetables, then starting cooking in the lovely open air kitchen. Between us we made Tom Yam soup, Pad Thai, spring rolls, curry paste lovingly ground with a pestle and mortar and made into red and green curry, a stir fry with basil, sticky rice with mango and coconut bananas. As there were choices of what you could cook, with a group of 10 it was a little more confusing than all making the same thing, but it all worked out fine. I was most pleased with the pad Thai which I intend cooking again and while I love the green curry, but it wouldn’t seem the same without the special Thai aubergines which I’d have to get from a specialist shop.
After all that eating, a bit of exercise seemed a good idea and our guesthouse organised for us to go for a trek in Doi Inthanon National Park, 90 minutes from Chiang Mai. In a small group of 8 we began with a stop at Wachirathan Waterfall …
Beginning at Phitsanulok Station, the train took us across the Central Plains with views of farmland as far as the eye can see, mainly rice, but also fruit, vegetables and flowers, punctuated with the odd building and town but then mountains started to loom all around, covered in trees and scrubby undergrowth.
From the lower terrace there are views to the city 300m below …
There are plenty of opportunities to gain merit through donation by writing a prayer or message on a gold cloth to be draped round a Buddha, on a bell to tinkle from the eaves or a new tile for the roof. And thankfully, the walk down is a lot easier.
It had been humid and in the mid 30s since we arrived, exactly as expected, but then we woke to a rain shower and a cooler day.
We are staying in W Home, a charming B&B in a neighbourhood of homes and local businesses just off Charoenkrung Road, the first road ever built in Bangkok.
Our comfy, if bijoux room, overlooks the lane outside and we were woken on our first morning by cockerels crowing.
When we were here before, Chris bought a couple of snazzy elephant handkerchiefs at the airport which said Jim Thompson on the label. Despite the guide book referring to him as the most famous farang in Thailand, we had not heard of Jim Thompson, but now know he was an American who came to Thailand with the army after WW2, fell in love with the country and returned to live. He was an adventurer and entrepreneur whose fame partly came from reviving the dying silk-weaving industry, promoting the silk in America where it sold well, especially after his company made the costumes for The King and I on Broadway, depicting the life of King Rama IV. He gained further renown by constructing the Jim Thompson house by dismantling six teak houses, all over 200 years old and reassembling them to make a home which he filled with Oriental art and particularly Thai paintings which he opened to the public. And then one day, while visiting the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, he went for a walk … and never came back. His mysterious disappearance has certainly added to his fame. We went on a tour of the house and watched a demonstration of boiling the silk cocoons to extract the thread and spinning it and I added several new hankies to Chris’s collection for his birthday.
Off Travelling Together 