Today we went on a boat tour of James Bond island and other islands in the beautiful Phang Nga Bay. All of the islands we saw today had very sharp limestone cliffs –  and caves!  At Hong Island we went kayaking in a really tight cave.  We had to lie down flat in the kayak and the ceiling was still only 1 inch above your head.    At one point, the guide even let air out of our kayak so we could get through the cave.  Once we made it through the passage we ended up a in beautiful lagoon with shear cliffs and mangrove trees.  On the roots of the mangrove trees were little lizard like creatures that our guide simply called “aliens”- but they are better known as mud skippers.

Next we went to a place that didn’t have an caves but you could still kayak.    It had great views and you could see features in the rocks like the “Scooby Doo” rock!  After that we went to a floating dock for lunch- called the Island of the Gypsies- it had been 1st settled over 200 years ago by Indonesians sailing north .  We thought you could explore the rest of the island after lunch but nope! But then we had a tour of the island by boat and we realized that the entire town is on stilts! It even had a floating soccer stadium and a really awesome looking golden mosque.

After lunch, we went to James Bond Island.  We docked near the island and then had to walk a bit to get to it.  It turns out that the island formed when the weaker rock surrounding the harder rock eroded away – leaving the famous shape.  In the 1970’s, they filmed part of the movie “The Golden Gun” here.  Since then its been extremely popular for tours- with plenty of souvenir shops that oddly had nothing to do with James Bond.   Dad, Jay and Bee even took a little hike through a cool rocky cave and took some really cool pictures.

Our last stop for the day was a cool beach halfway back to town on Na Ga Island with great views of the faraway islands.  Was great for swimming and we even built a sandcastle model of James Bond Island.