Katie and I headed out to Phang Nga Bay for a day of sea kayaking and canoeing in caves. We were the only people aboard the speed boat who'd elected to do the self-paddle rather than lazy guided tour. We jumped into a 2-person kayak and immediately tipped ourselves. Plan B.
I jumped into a one-person kayak...
...and Katie jumped into a canoe with our guide Nan (there was only one single kayak available).
We paddled under giant cliffs and overhangs and by funky rock formations.
Eventually we beached the kayak and all three of us loaded into the canoe which was deflatable and capable of fitting into tighter spaces inside the caves.
At various points in the canoe, we flattened down as much as possible as we just barely squeezed under the cave ceiling.
We jumped out of the canoe and swam part way through the cave into a private lagoon.
Katie with our guide Nan who sadly lost his entire family in the tsunami.
The caves stretched around for ages and we needed flashlights to be able to see anything. In one cave we spotted more than 100 tiny bats clinging to the ceiling of the cave. Spotting daylight was a sign we were headed onto the next adventure.
The natural beauty of our surrounds.
The canoes all backed up waiting for the tide to drop enough to exit the second cave and access the lagoon. We were moving toward that thin stream of glowing green from within the pitch black cave. The guides all deflated portions of the canoe to sink lower into the water to give us a chance of scraping below the low cave walls.
The tide was much lower when we left the lagoon so it was much easier to glide below and back into the cave.
Look at how low the guides sank into the water when they deflated the canoes to gain access into and through the caves.
After a beautiful smorgasbord lunch on the boat, we jumped and dived off the boat for swimming and a chance to play around in the kayaks and canoes.
When we arrived back at the hotel, we headed for drinks at the swim-up pool bar where we discovered a yummy drink called Up & Down.
After a few...everything went blurry, especially when Katie started mixing the drinks! Nah, we did make nice with the bartenders though and were rewarded with styrofoam french fries with ketchup (a typical snack there) and fresh juice delivered to our room.
I was dying to try out the room service gondolas parked in various spots around the resort, and hopelessly sank the heavy wood boat. I struggled to pull and push and tip the boat trying to empty it of the water and bring it back to the surface but continued to make the sitation worse.
We splurged an extra couple bucks for the ease of a hotel taxi to bring us to our nightly destination in Patong. We were surprised to see many of the same people from the night before as we strolled along the main bar street. We'd become 'regulars' in only a couple nights. Of course, with all the travellers, not many are too regular. All over town we saw Tsunami warning and evacuation signs like these.
We tried a couple new places including Cocktails & Dreams, Seduction(a dance club offering free entry and 2 free drinks on a Friday night!), returned to Kangaroo where we saw a few of our friends from the previous night, and went onto Rock City (pictured above). The live band was good and seemed to include mother-daughter go-go dancers. Now we've seen it all.
