Sunday, October 8, Day 12 

After a morning of correspondence and writing, we ventured out for lunch. I decided on Pad Thai again, ha. It was another sunny day with high haze. It felt too hot and humid for a long walk so we decided to wait for evening. We finally made our excursion to Wat Doi Thep Nimit Monastery that Neil has been viewing up on the hill from our room. Sadly, the clear skies hazed over and we didn’t have very good light for photos or sunset. Follow the link above if you want to see it in dazzling sunlight.

When Neil was exploring the footpaths in the jungle when searching for the monastery early in our visit, he said he could easily imagine the jungle teeming with tigers, elephants, and rhinos like it was 500 years ago when it was first being settled by outsiders. Back then Phuket was known as Jung Ceylon, which was originally derived from an incorrect transcription of the Malay phrase “Tanjung Salang,” meaning Cape Salang. Driving through the jungle on our way to the monastery I could also imagine the old days when it was abundant with wildlife.

This was our first tuk tuk ride in Phuket. We remember tuk tuks as being a cheap way to get around town in Bangkok and Chang Mai – but that was years ago – now they are almost 10 times as expensive as we expected. They wanted $17 to go about 3 kilometers and come back!! Yikes, no wonder they were mostly idle and desperate for riders. We had the driver drop us at the Banzaan market for dinner again tonight.  

Monday, October 9, Day 13

Today was our last full day in Thailand. I had my last dental appointment to check my healing. The oral surgeon said I was healing well and she took out my stitches.

Throughout our meanderings in Phuket, Neil was having fun looking for the most interesting business names. Here are some notable ones, now he regrets not having photos of them:

We went to the rooftop pool area for sunset and enjoyed an Indian dinner for our last night.

Tuesday, October 10, Day 14, Departure day

The day before we had arranged for the hotel to have a driver for us at the specific time necessary to make it to the airport. We took our bags down and the driver wasn’t there yet. We said we would be right back and walked the few steps to our little SAW Thai restaurant, where we saw them panic and look at the clock because they hadn’t opened yet. We said no, just saying goodbye. The proprietress got the biggest smile and was so happy to give us hugs. The cook came out too and we got fun photos. 

We said goodbye to the hotel staff after a 2 week stay and climbed into the frigid cab which finally arrived. Neil was laughing the entire way to the airport at the speed the driver was going; we were being passed by semis in the slow lane and sometimes by motorbikes on the shoulder! We wondered if he was conserving gas or whether the engine was just well worn. When we got to a steep hill that question was answered. Our cab had the “Little Engine that Could.” We slowly made it up the hill (being passed by scooters and everybody else.) We wondered if he turned off the AC if we would surge forward another 10 or 15 kph. Luckily we got to the airport in plenty of time since it wasn’t very busy.

Off to Singapore! We enjoyed the view of the white sand beaches and green hills as we look off over Phuket Island (we had arrived in the dark and didn’t have the views coming in.) 

Monday, October 2, Day 6 

Last night, we bundled up in our beach towels on our one-hour ride in the minivan from the harbor back to the hotel. Neil had to laugh when we climbed into the van on the harbor pier, the AC was so high that the entire windshield was fogged over. Do they think the only setting is MAX?? I dug in my bag for the warm clothes they had recommended we bring. Little did we know those weren’t for the boat ride but the transportation ride. 

After morning tea and finishing our bananas, we were ready for another trip to the local Banzaan market. Our mornings are usually spent working on correspondence, writing, and photo processing. Morning tea with fruit, an early lunch and then dinner out have been enough. Today for lunch we ventured to the Dang Restaurant that Neil has been wanting to try. I think just for the name, ha. It’s not far from Wink Wink Massage, but he didn’t try that place, as curious as we were about the actual services offered. I got Pad Thai again and, yep, boring flavor. Reinforces our theory about tourist restaurants. It convinced me to only get it at our little locals-loved backstreet corner SAW Thai restaurant near the hotel. But I did discover that one of the smoothies at Dang was chocolate. It’s not a shake with milk but rather with ice. Neil says they should more accurately call it a slushy. Even so, that Dang slushy was still very tasty!

Exploring in the Banzaan local market, Neil found a fruit that looked like a cherimoya: one of his favorites on Maui. It is not quite the same flavor but we enjoyed it for something different. Back at the hotel, I took a dip in the pool during the heat of the day.

I found a little shop right next to our corner Thai restaurant for a manicure/pedicure at local’s prices. Nice to have a little pampering. Later in the day, we found that there was a rooftop pool and bar in addition to a gym on top of the other building. We went up to check out the view.

For our evening entertainment, we found a public stage in the Jung Ceylon shopping mall that appears to have performances nightly. We had just missed one of the dancing performances the other night, arriving in time to see dancers in beautiful traditional clothing forming up for a group photo. We thought we would get seats early tonight. It turns out they change the show nightly and tonight was Fire Dancing. At first we thought “we see that on Maui,” but stayed to watch. Glad we did as it was different from the Polynesian version because they used some “fireworks/sparklers” in their performance!

Tuesday, October 3, Day 7 

I spent the morning writing about our Sunday canoe excursion while it was still fresh in my mind. 

Today was my last set of dental procedures: crowns and then teeth extractions.  I had lamb curry for lunch because it will be the last time I can chew food for a few days. The crowns went on very easily without any shots! I came back in the evening for the oral surgery. This was the first time I had to wait over an hour for my appointment (every other time they took me in immediately). I was in and out of the chair in 45 minutes! I had to bite on gauze in my mouth for two hours to reduce the bleeding and they gave me an ice pack for the swelling. Neil has been so sweet and supportive. He walks me to and from the appointments (only a block from our hotel) and makes sure to listen to all the instructions for my care.

Wednesday, October 4, Day 8 

I had a good night. I used diluted clove oil on gauze pads to reduce the pain and for the antiseptic effect, and the bleeding has stopped. I used the ice pack a few times and I didn’t need any pain pills. I am going to stay quiet for a few days. It’s a rainy day so it’s easier to stay in. (86 F with 94% humidity)  I am finally having time to work on our journal entries for Cambodia. Neil went foraging for us this morning. He had looked at the weather and said it wasn’t supposed to rain until 2 pm. I encouraged him to take the umbrella anyway which was a good thing as it poured soon after he left. He brought back delicious bananas and beautiful yellow Marigold Buddha flowers for me.

I plan to stick with soups and smoothies for a few days (fruit juice blended with ice is the definition of a smoothie here.) For lunch, we both had a dahl and for dinner Neil got our new favorite lamb dish, Roghan Josh, while I got a mere cream of chicken soup! It did have a lovely flavor.

We then headed to Jung Ceylon Shopping Center to watch the show. But there were no chairs out in front of the stage? I was finally able to find an information booth and found out that the performances had just been for one week for the celebration of Golden Week. Seems we had just caught the tail end.

Thursday, October 5, Day 9 

Another quiet morning. I had a good night, no pain and I continue to use clove oil which helps. A little bit of a headache from the antibiotics and I use white willow bark periodically for the headache.

I am getting a lot of writing done in the mornings. After lunch we took a walk to the beach and sat for a while and watched the parasails. They have a fascinating system. I included a video of a launch and a landing below. (You might need to go to the website to see it.)

Before dinner, we went to the rooftop to watch the sunset. Such beautiful color in the sky.

Neil has been fascinated by motorbike mobile restaurant carts that have live hot coals and woks with boiling oil actively cooking and grilling even while they motor down the street to their next location. He bought hot satay chicken from them a number of times. 

Friday, October 6, Day 10 

Yeah, I am feeling better and eating more solid food. I had Pad Thai for lunch and we tried the Iranian restaurant for dinner. Neil enjoyed a delectable leg of lamb and I had beef and eggplant in red bean stew. I found a smoothie place where I could get a chocolate banana smoothie with milk and honey. Yum. It’s still raining and I didn’t feel like going farther afield. 

Neil remembered he wanted to take a look at Thai TV since he forgot to check Cambodian TV. He surfed through many channels. At one point he ran across Raiders of the Lost Ark dubbed in Thai. And also found a sports channel showing Thai boxing. Every couple days there’s a large truck cruising the street with fighters standing in the back making noise a loudspeaker (in English) announcing Thai boxing nights at the local arena (located across from Banzaan market.) Neil kinda wanted to go until we figured out it was $75 a ticket. I told him to go ahead (without me) but he decided against it. He thought it was funny to find it on TV after all the street promotion.

Saturday, October 7, Day 11 

We woke to sunshine so we decided to walk to the beach and enjoy the sand and surf. The afternoon clouded over and we worked on our Cambodian log which will make creating web posts (like this one!) so much faster and timely when we get back to Maui.

We ate dinner at the street vendors outside of the Banzaan market. It becomes a lively, colorful, multi-sensory street fair after dark. Neil was particularly amused by a 9-year old bartender at a stall where he made alcoholic drinks and smoothies. He got a huge smile when Neil asked to take a photo.

Reminders:
Photo Galleries: The pictures you see embedded in the post are only a subset of the pictures in the galley for this posting. If you are reading this in email, you need to click into the website to see all the pictures. You can click on the first picture in the gallery and then arrow through reading the descriptions. This is also true for all the past postings in case you missed them.

Videos: We try to avoid doing videos but there are a few. Some people who get their posts by email have trouble viewing them from there. In that case, you may need to click into the website to see them.

Soundtrack: Neil created a playlist of instrumental music on Spotify to help us get in the proper mindset for writing about our recent adventures. You may enjoy listening to it while you read. Accounts on Spotify are free and you’ll need one to listen at this link: Bali Soundtrack.

Sunday, October 1, Day 5 continued

The boat anchored at Ko Hong island after our afternoon tea. The guides were all in the water with the canoes by the time we went down the steps for our next canoe exploration. As a couple would reach the bottom of the steps, their guide would paddle up to the fantail for them to load. We were happy to be near the end. Wonderful cooking aromas were also wafting through the boat. Mid-ship on the lower deck was a kitchen with two conventional gas stoves where 3 women were cooking in woks almost continually through the trip. As we watched them while standing on the fantail waiting to board our canoe for our exploration of Ko Hong island, one of the cooks tossed a handful of chilies into a wok and the pungent spicy steam hit the air. It was like someone kicked an anthill. Everyone started coughing, even the crew, as they rushed around seeking fresh air. The cook looked at us apologetically but we gave her the thumbs up that it smelled great even as our eyes watered and we coughed. We quickly jumped into our canoe to get away.

Nga National Park ranger station across from Ko Hong island has a radio tower and a small cabin barely visible on the beach. Tour captains report by radio their daily passenger counts and the tour companies are charged accordingly (our entrance fee was included with the price). Because of watery eyes and coughing, Neil barely had the camera ready as we paddled under a large limestone archway into the hong. The tide was still receding and mud was appearing at the edges of the lagoon. We stopped to look for mudskippers and fiddler crabs. Centered at the opposite open entrance to the lagoon is a large pillar of limestone. Bau named this as “James Bond 2”. The James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun made this limestone island bay famous with the villain’s lair located inside one of these limestone islands. (The lair was really on a studio stage but the external shots are real.) The island was nicknamed “James Bond Island” and it receives over 1000 visitors a day. We gave it a miss. But I didn’t know there was another “pillar” used in the filming, or maybe this one is just a look-alike that was nicknamed. Now I have to watch the movie again. We cruised around the outside of the island under the “elephant rock” and headed back to the boat as we watched the Sea Eagles circling and fishing in the wake of a departing boat.

Before dinner, our guides educated us about the Loy Kratong Thai traditional festival held to pay homage to the goddess of rivers and waterways. It is traditionally held on the night of the 12th full moon of the year. Bau explained that the Kratong are launched down rivers and into the sea. Bau helped us build a Kratong out of flowers and banana leaves attached to a buoyant segment of banana stalk. I love that John Gray Sea Canoe is an eco-friendly company and they avoid the use of disposable plastic and work to protect the ocean from trash. For instance, they provided us drinking water in glass reusable bottles instead of plastic bottles. Since we were using metal nails in our Kratong to expedite the construction we would therefore collect ours back from the ocean after the candles burned so we would not contaminate the ocean with the nails. Bau pulled out the shiny stainless steel nails for re-use.

After we viewed the sunset colors, it was time for our final feast. It was a fun production to watch a human chain of crew members handing all the dishes up the stairs from below deck. Let’s see if I can name all the dishes we were served for dinner: Tom Yum Soup, Masaman Curry and rice, Satay and peanut sauce, Fried Rice, Pad Thai, Cashew Chicken, Minced Beef,  Whole Fried Fish, plus Bananas in Coconut Milk for dessert. In addition, there were four vegetarian dishes on a different table to accommodate the vegetarian passengers. As we stuffed ourselves, we were warmed by the laughter from the crew’s lounge downstairs as they relaxed and enjoyed their dinner. We never figured out which dish was the one that made everyone cough.

Once again, the crew launched the canoes and we carried our Kratong down the steps to load in the canoe with Bau. Neil didn’t bring the camera for this trip because it was pitch black, and he didn’t want to disrupt the occasion with flash photography. All the canoes headed to a dark overhang cave under the island and Bau lit the candles and incense for us. Neil and I launched the Kratong after thinking of a wish and sat to enjoy the peace. Later, as we pulled the Kratong back in the canoe in the dark, our eyes had dark adapted enough to see the bioluminescent plankton sparkling as the water was disturbed by our hands and the paddle. 

We had a clear starlit sky overhead for our return trip allowing us to enjoy the unusually bright Milky Way from the bow. It was a beautiful end to the day.

Sunday, October 1, Day 5 

Exploration day to Phang Nga Bay! We booked a day excursion with John Gray’s Sea Canoe to explore sea caves and inner lagoons among the marine limestone rock islands in the Phang Nga Bay in the northern reaches of the Andaman Sea off the northeast coast of Phuket. The Hong by Starlight tour starts midday and ends after dark thereby missing the most crowded times. We loved the all-inclusive tour that included transport to and from our hotel. 

After an hour drive in the frigid minivan (do they think the only setting is MAX?), we arrived at the office at Ao Po Harbor and loaded on another bus that drove us down the pier to the boat ready for our noon departure. The upper boat deck was for the passengers (26 of us) and the lower deck was for the crew, the kitchen staff, and the canoes. They passed out bright orange life jackets that we had to place over our heads (but we didn’t have to don properly) because the harbor departures were monitored by closed circuit video and if any passenger didn’t have on a bright orange life jacket, the boat would receive a fine! As soon as we were past the cameras, we could take them off and never needed to use them for the rest of the trip.

It was a perfect day to be on the water–sunny and no wind. In the one-hour boat cruise to Phanak Island, we were served a delicious Thai lunch and given a briefing. Each couple would have a personal guide who would paddle us through the Tidal Nape Sea Caves. We drew names out of a hat and I drew Bau as our guide for the day. Entrance to the caves are tide dependent; some are inaccessible during high tide and others are too shallow to access at low tide. While waiting for the tide to go down enough, Neil and I (and all the passengers) were given free time to paddle our own canoe and swim in a protected bay. Paddling under the overhangs, we had to be vigilant to avoid hitting the stalactites with our heads. Amazing! The ocean temperature was a balmy 86 degrees and was lovely for a swim. According to our guide the green ocean color was because of the limestone “dust” that creates a muddy bottom. 

Bau took over the paddle in the rear of the canoe and Neil headed to the front as our photographer. As we approached Oyster Cave, Bau had us lay back flat to traverse the cave. There were times when I felt my nose would touch the ceiling. And then we exited into this awesome internal lagoon in the middle of the limestone island! Such places are called hong in the Thai language, and the word is also used to mean room or chamber. It was so peaceful and tranquil (until a few other canoers needed to yell to each other, ha).The following video is us traveling through Oyster Cave:

We exited out the way we came in and continued paddling under the overhangs on our way to Bat Cave. This cave passage is longer, about 150 meters or about 500 feet, and has much higher ceilings. The guides used lights to show us the features including yellow insect bats that hang overhead in the dark interior of the ceilings. The inner lagoon seemed even larger and included some mangrove trees. The depth at places was only 3 feet and we could see where it would be inaccessible at low tide. The following video is us entering into Bat Cave:

Back to the boat, the crew quickly helped us offload and they stacked all 14 canoes high on the deck for transition to the next stop of Ko Hong island. We were offered afternoon tea and coffee plus fruit and little sandwiches. The views from the front of the boat were so impressive, we spent the time watching new islands come into view. We couldn’t understand the people next to us who put their nose in their phones for the transition!