Eyeball Fruit, Mud Snakes & James Bond - The Guest Appearance

She's half Chinese, half German; she has very appropriately coined herself, The Germanese. Being the first visitor to meet up with us on our adventures, The Germanese will be making some guest appearance posts on the blog to help cover Thailand. Enjoy:


After six long months of scrimping and saving, eating ramen noodles and KD for dinner, Jammer and I were finally on our way to our month long trip around South East Asia.  We had planned to meet up with some of our best friends back home, Morgan and Lindsay, who were newly engaged and living in Phuket, our first stop.  

Phuket is one of the southern provinces of Thailand, situated on the coast of the Andaman Sea.  It is a popular tourist destination because of its beautiful beaches and great weather, both which we experienced there.  We stayed at The Surin Resort, formerly The Chedi, which is located in the Surin Beach Area.  The resort was literally paradise, the best beach we visited on the entire trip.  It was so good, that we convinced our world weary gypsy bum friends to join us there nearly every day of our time there. We spent the 11 days of our time in Phuket eating, suntanning, swimming, snorkeling, eating, elephant trekking, eating, sea canoeing and eating.  

One of the most interesting things we did in Phuket was the sea canoeing trip we took to Phang Nga Bay.  The bay has many limestone formations that resemble islands but what the Thais call “hongs”, meaning “rooms”.  These hongs are hollow in the middle, being carved away by many years of sea water erosion.  The hongs are entered through small crevices that are accessible when the tide is at certain points.  As someone who’s very claustrophobic, traveling through the caves into the hongs is an uncomfortable experience.  It’s so tight that you actually have to lie down with all your limbs inside the canoe just to get through intact. Names such as Bat Cave, Diamond Cave and Mangrove Cave describe the contents of the hongs.  The rest of our group didn’t have the pleasure of smelling the bat guano, since the tide was too high to enter the Bat Cave, luckily I had the good fortune of already having visited the cave on two previous trips to Phuket.  

Phang Nga Bay is also the home to “James Bond Island” featured in the 1974 Bond movie, The Man With The Golden Gun. The sea canoeing experience is almost a full day trip, they generally include transport to and from your hotel, lunch (including eyeball fruit, check out Lindsay’s pic), the boat and a guide.  Our guides were great, they spoke very good English and even managed to scare the crap out of Linds with a fake “mud” snake.  If you ever visit Phuket a trip to Phang Nga Bay is a must, and be sure to tip your guide.

The Germanese