Packed the small backpacks and left the large ones at the Sayan Tours office, where it sat with about 30 other backpacks… They took us by pick-up truck to the harbor where we got into a long tail boat. Not very comfortable as you sit very close to the side. As it was clouded an a bit windy there were plenty of big waves. The first part we went through a mangrove forest after which was the open sea. The rocks (or maintains) were very beautiful as the pictures will show. The driver (you can hardly call him a captain, considering the use old car engines to drive the boat) was very good. He took us through small openings without hitting anything. We picked up our guide at the Muslim fishing village where we would spend the night and sped off to see an island with very old wall paintings. Didn’t see much of the paintings, but we were definitely seen by large groups of very hungry mosquitoes. And as none of us had put on any anti mosquito spray the feasted on us like there was no tomorrow (I will say that some of them never saw tomorrow…).

Before we got to the next island we had to cross a large open stretch of water. The boats went quite fast and went up and down. It was a blast! When Inge started to look worried I told her she should see it as a Six Flags attraction…. Have a look at the video (in high, medium or low resolution) to see what I mean with the waves.

Next was a small island where we had to climb over large rocks and through caves to reach a lacuna in the middle of the island. You could jump in, but it was about 5 meter straight down and the climb out was adventures to say the least.

After that we had lunch (yes, fried rice with pineapple) on the beach of another island where we had about a hour to lay on the beach and swim, very nice.

From there we went to the “James Bond” island, where they filmed The man with the golden gun. It has the high rock which is only about 20 meters in width. As all tourist go there you find a lot of people trying to sell you all kinds of things. Before we got there we saw the strangest thing: a long row of canoes with tourists. You see 2 tourists with a Thai person paddling per canoe. Later we ran into a large boat, where all the tourist came from. They pay a lot of money (over US$ 100,-) to go by boat from Phuket to the Phang Nga area and the canoes paddle them around the island. When they get back to the boat, the next 2 tourists get into the canoe… Unbelievable.

As it was around 4 pm. We made our way back to the Panyi village and had some coffee there and had a walk around. There are about 1500 people living there and the whole village is built on poles. Most of the poles are still of wood and they have to change them every 10 years as they rot away. When the tide us low the village falls dry, with high tide the water raises about 2 meters and there is water underneath the village. This is a good thing as they have no sewer system yet and all is dumped straight down…

The village even has it’s own school and heath center. As the guide said: it’s a good thing this is a Muslim village, because if the had been allowed to drink alcohol a lot of people would have fallen into the water walking home.

After dinner we sat and talked with some Canadians who had just spend some time on Ko Lanta, which they thought was absolutely beautiful and very cheap. They also said that the beaches around Krabi are not very good at the moment as they were constructing new roads there and this creates a lot of noise and dust.