Two Seas Tour Day

Another early early morning for me! I booked a tour to see Phnag Bay. The tour left at 7am so I was to be picked up at 6 from my hotel. The night before I asked the front desk if I could have a breakfast packed for me since I was missing the breakfast. I got up, got ready and headed down actually about 5-10 minutes ahead of schedule. The person there to pick me up was also there so we left early. We drove about 15 minutes and stopped to get a pair of friends before driving more. We then met up with a van full of people and continued on to the dock, another 30 minutes or so. Finally we arrived and got on the boat and waited for a few more people to arrive. In total we were 16 I believe.

Philippe, the owner of the tour program spoke a bit about what we were going to see and do for the day. We also had some snacks and juice on board as well. First we went to go through a cave and into a lagoon. It was really beautiful to see all of the rock formations. We got into some sea kayaks and were kayaked around. Unfortunately, there was one staff member who was sick and supposed to be my boatman so instead Philippe rowed me around. It wasn't a huge problem except he was taking pictures for the whole day and all of my pictures are me turned around or looking over my shoulder while others have nice photos of the whole boat. He was also distracted a bit operating both as tour guide for the whole group, rowing my boat and trying to be the attentive boatman like the other couples all had. I still really enjoyed my time though. Anyway, it was pretty awesome to get to the lagoon-we saw a few monkeys there. We arrived and the tide was already coming in and the water rising. We were able to see how quickly the water rose as we were in the lagoon. When we left the lagoon to go through the cave we had to duck or lay down in the boats to clear the rocks hanging down!

Here bright and early!

Kayaking!

In the lagoon

On the boat

We got back on the big boat again and went to another spot to go on the kayaks and look at more formations. Here we were already seeing big groups being boated around. Back on the big boat again and off to James Bond Island, where the filmed 2 minutes of "The Man with the Golden Gun". There were many, many tourists there taking photos. We got a few good ones and took off after about 20 minutes. There was also a cool giant leaning rock.

Needle rock

Sea Eagles

Next we were served lunch on board which was pretty good. The staff was all very attentive and would clear things away without you even asking. The last stop was a "private" beach. It was actually part of a National Park, but there was no one else there so we had the beach to ourselves. I laid in the sun for a little bit and then went into the water. It was so nice-not too hot, not too cold. There were also little fish swimming around in the water. Then it was back on the boat and time to head home. I fell asleep in the van on the ride back to my hotel-it was an early and busy day! I arrived at the hotel and met Oh Mee by the pool. We sat outside and looked up places to have dinner or what to do for the evening.

At the private beach!

Back in the room I cleaned up before we went to dinner. We picked a place we found on Trip Advisor and walked there. It wasn't too far; we both thought it was going to be further away based on the map we saw. It was also the opposite direction of what we had explored the previous night and there were more shops and restaurants. The food was decent but they didn't have mango rice. We had considered going to find a restaurant we could get some, but decided we'd tried the fried bananas for dessert instead. Those were pretty good and we also got a bottle of chocolate syrup and honey to drizzle over the fried bananas.

Then we walked to the beach and saw the ending of the sunset. We continued exploring that area a little bit and then headed back towards our hotel. Along the way we stumbled upon a restaurant/bar that had a giant wave maker to simulate surfing! I got a mango juice and we sat and watched people learning to surf. It was pretty cool. We had a nice stroll along the beach on our way back to the hotel.