Elephants, Monkeys and James Bond Island

Picked up at 8 again today for another busy day. Bit of a different group today - three couples all independently from Melbourne and an Israeli girl by herself.

It was a long drive first up and we travelled off the island and onto the peninsula to a region called Phang-Nga.

Our first adventure was Elephant trekking. We were dropped off at a small dusty place and were shepherded towards some elephants all feeling a bit bemused because no-one really seemed to know what was going on! We boarded our Elephants by climbing onto a platform and then onto the Elephant's back onto a chair tied on rather uncomfortably (for the Elephant). Ours was a small female we named Chuckles.

The rider sat on the Elephant's head and steered with his feet on her ears and with calls of something like 'Roi' or 'Hoi'. He also had a rather evil looking pointy metal stick but thankfully he didn't use it although the Israeli girl said her rider was using it frequently.

The Elephants moved very slowly and steadily and ours did pretty much what she felt like - there were several tracks that meandered along next to each other and you could see the impressions made by the Elephants previously that had filled with rain from the previous night and Chuckles, understandably, didn't want to get her feet wet and seemed more interested in creating her own tracks.

It was pretty scary when we went downhill, as the angle was fairly steep. We had a 'seatbelt' which consisted of a rope tied off across the chair (by me!).

Our Elephant again proved to be very smart when it came to the river crossing as she found the narrowest spot. The elderly (sorry Mum and Dad) Melbourne couple's big bull elephant took the longest possible route and they almost came off!

When we reached the other side the guide climbed off Chuckle's back and gestured us down to sit on her head for a photo. I had a go first. Her skin was all leathery and her hair was very stiff and coarse. Dave didn't fancy it and so the guide gestured me down again. Not knowing what was going on, I climbed back down with my legs behind her ears and the, before I knew it, the guide had shouted and we were off with him walking beside us and me in the rider's position.

It felt pretty precarious up there especially as I didn't want to grip with my legs too hard in case I gave out inadvertent instructions and we ended up heading in entirely the wrong direction or something like that. I was also having most of the skin on my legs removed by Chuckles' hair like sandpaper.

It was fantastic fun, and I was glad I'd done it. I was surprised to find when we got back that I was the only one though.

We clambered off at the end and the second part of our tour group took the tour. Dave and I bought some bananas for the baby elephant (corny I know but it was only about a dollar) although he polished them off in approximately ten seconds. He curled his trunk around them all and straight down.

Had a break whilst waiting for the other group and we sat around chatting and getting to know the rest of the group.

We then had a little elephant show starring the baby elephant where he did things such as basketball, putting a hat on people (all girls) and doing rolls. The finale was a tug of war contest between five of us (including Dave and me) and the elephant which the elephant won hands down although he did toy with us for a while. He does weigh one tonne in our defence.

The elephants did appear to be well treated and happy. They were being fed as we left and packing it away.

We then headed to Phang Nga bay where we boarded a longtail boat and headed into the bay. Longtails are long thin boats painted in range of garish colours. Ours was yellow and green. Must be Norwich fans. It has an engine that looks like it has been stolen from a car with a long pipe attached to it with a propeller on the end. This can lift out of the water and also acts as a rudder. The seats were three wide and there must have been about fifteen rows.

We were joined by another group at this point who were staying with us for the sea kayaking and James Bond Island.

We headed up through mangrove swamps in the river as we headed out to the bay. The journey took about 25 minutes until we reached our destination which was a boat moored in the bay from where we were going to do our kayaking safari.

We all piled onto the boat and got prepared for the trip: life jackets, shoes off, valuables into plastic bags and off we went.

The kayaks had two people plus a guide and were actually inflatable rather than the usual plastic. Ours was a little crazy to say the least and kept serenading us with scorpion songs and chatting up all the girls.

First we went through a little archway where the ceiling was about 3 or 4 metres high and maybe ten metres long. Coming out the other side we followed the cliffs round before squeezing through a tiny gap where we had to lie down flat in the kayak. This was well worth it because we came it into a spectacular open cave. It was also very impressive going under the cave walls because we were barely more than a few centimetres from the walls all the way round the boat.

We then went into some of the Mangrove Swamps and saw some bizarre fish/amphibian that sat on a tree branch and then skittered through the water to another branch to get away from us. Being Thailand of course, at this point we were greeted by what we now refer to as a floating 7-11 to sell us drinks and cigarettes. We then went through some more little cave networks before heading back to the boat with our guide singing all the way.

We were reunited with our shoes and bags and then it was off towards James Bond Island - the main attraction. It was about another fifteen minutes to our destination. It was a little surreal arriving - a concrete dock and small concrete huts nestling in between two towering rocks. We clambered off the boat here and had to run another gauntlet past people selling all kinds of rubbish although they did seem more interested in grabbing girls.

The actual island is quite small and sits about 20/30m off the coast of the island we were on. It was used in Dr No but I confess it's been ages since I've seen that film so I can't say when or where it was used. I thought it was in The Man with The Golden Gun anyway. I'll have to go and watch them both again!!

There was a small walk around the cliffs to a small beach and jetty which provided some good views back at the island.

We headed back the way we came on the longtail and stopped at a floating village for lunch although it wasn't really a floating village as it was firmly fixed on stilts. Lunch, again, was pretty good. We had fried chicken again and some battered fish disk. Was a good spot for lunch with nice views and some good company.

The longtail took us back to the dock and it started to rain on the way - our first rain for ages. We had a bit of a dash for the minibuses as a result as it was raining pretty heavily by this point and we didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to a few people.

Our next stop was a monkey temple. Usual Buddhist temple but this time in a cave populated by monkeys. We were a little worried that the monkeys would be hiding because of the rain but thankfully they were about in droves. We could see several hanging from the cliff face almost as soon as we got there.

The temple itself had about 30/40 monkeys running around and we could buy some bananas for about 20 pence to feed them. One of the Melbourne couples went first and almost every banana they handed out was stolen by the alpha male so when I got mine I went over to one side and managed to hand most of mine out to small, cute monkeys!! They were pretty smart as they grabbed the bananas and sprinted for some corner. They looked very cute looking up holding their hands out for a banana.

We had one more stop - at a cashew factory which was really nothing more than a shop with a small workstation to show what they really did at the factory which was probably miles away. We got to taste a few and bought a few packs as they were quite cheap.