A Golden Gun amidst a Mangrove Forest

After a refreshing three days on Koh Phi Phi, we booked a hotel room in Phang Nga. We stumbled upon a cheap bungalow in the middle of a National Park. We didn’t hesitate for even a split second and we were glad we didn’t. When we arrived at our bungalow we saw it was surrounded by a mangrove forest and it looked like a lumberjack’s house, it was that authentic. When we unloaded our luggage we went for a walk in the National Park. The first thing we noticed was the inhabitants of the mangrove forest weren’t shy at all. We saw mud crabs, mud lobsters, a couple of beautiful blue birds and even a wild snake!

When we came to a side road, we spotted a road entirely made out of wood. On the side o the road were houses build in the same fashion. Under the wooden road and bridges we saw a concrete path which lay now demolished on the muddy shore of the bay. And then we knew that what we were seeing were the results of the tsunami which reached Thailand all those years ago. The people here managed to survive (if you can call it like that) and were now busy rebuilding their former houses. Sadly, most of the Thai people are poor and can’t afford to rebuild a house made out of concrete and bricks. These people live of catching fish (and tourists for their expensive boat excursions) and that is often all they do. We were glad to be a part of these tourist traps because without the local fishermen and women, we wouldn’t have been able to see what we saw. Starting with a golden Buddha which lay in a cave filled with monkeys.

The day after the same fisherman took us to see James Bond Island. Obviously this island was named such because it was the setting for the famous movie: ‘James Bond and the man with the golden gun’. After we visited the island (which we did quite early to avoid the many tourists (which of course, we aren’t)) we went to Koh Panyee, a Muslim village build entirely on stilts with a huge monolith protecting the backside of the village. Too bad all the village had to offer were souvenir shops and grumpy Thai people.

After three days of rest and quiet we left Phang Nga and signed up for a beach vacation. Three more days of relaxing on a beach, renting bikes and riding around in the Northern part of Phuket really did the trick. The stress had completely left our bodies after a few scrumptious meals in a restaurant on the beach and we were ready to enter the busy life and nightlife of Bangkok.