The previous post in this series is here..
The first morning in Phuket, we decided to take a trip to James Bond Island. We were told that this is the only touristy place to visit outside of the resorts in that area. We had booked a long tail boat tour for 10 and 7 of us went on the trip. An energetic kid was our guide. He picked us up in a van from the hotel in the morning at 7:30 AM and we drove almost an hour to the dock. There we took a boat ride for almost another 45 minutes to go to the Island.
The island is small and you have four spots to see in total. Given only 4 to 5 boats can stop at the island, as soon as the boat docks, they give the guide a laminated card with the time for leaving. The time allotted for us was 45 minutes. So we had to do a rush rush job at every place, take group pictures, solo pictures, couple pictures and by the time our guide got us out of one spot to the next, he was so relieved.
He even had some plastic guns and fans as props for us to take pictures. Before we knew it, it was time to get back on the boat and then on the van to the hotel.
There is a muslim floating village on the way with nice views. There is also a mangrove forest for most of the route but there were no birds or critters we could see. Only exception was some hawks and kites which I barely managed to capture on camera from a moving boat! The boats themselves are interesting.. they have the engine high up and open with only the propeller going into the water from a long shaft.. They move it up and down for speed and right to left for navigation.
We also saw rock carvings which are thousands of years old in caves. Never realized we were so close to Andaman islands till we saw that the ferries were all Andaman!
Here are the photos..
more photos.. the roads in Phuket in this area were all lined with street lights that had elephants on them. Just beautiful!
A video highlights reel of the morning trip to Bond island..
We came back to the hotel and by the time we went from our rooms to the beach, we were an hour late.. and we missed some of the ceremony.. but were happy to jump in the pool with all our friends to have fun.
All the bond girls on our trip were happy and all smiles after this trip. That was good enough for all the Bonds..