Ugh. Talk about early morning. We are taking a tour to Nga Bay, which is about a 2 hour drive from Phuket. We have to meet in the theater by 6:45am. Normally not an issue, but we stayed up last night to see the Rolling Stones tribute band, who were excellent BTW, and ended up not getting as much sleep as we (well, as I) probably should have had for this early morning, long day trip. I’m figuring I’ll sleep on the bus.
We actually get to the theater pretty early and end up on the first bus called, which is so much better than sitting there forever waiting. Phuket is a tender port, so we are escorted aboard the tender, then once ashore, walk down the street to the tour meeting point, and then further into Patong to get the bus in a parking lot in the middle of town.
Our tour guide, Jennifer (not her real name, of course, but the one we can pronounce), is great. She is sweet and personable and very knowledgeable. We get the history of the area and of Thailand as we wind our way up the hills around the peninsula, with gorgeous views overlooking different bays and beaches. Eventually we pass the airport, which we are surprised to learn is the 2nd largest/busiest airport in Thailand – after Bangkok, and soon thereafter cross over the bridge that connects Phuket island with the mainland. We still have an hour or so more to go, but we’ll be stopping at a Wat where there is a reclining Buddha located in a cave.
At the Wat, Jennifer hands out our 5 baht bathroom fee and toilet paper (Very prepared, she’s thought of everything!). Then we all head toward the cave with the Buddha. On the way, we pass through a shopping area with stalls selling all sorts of handicrafts, trinkets and big bags of bananas with cut up corn cobs in there. I joke about buying a bag for myself since the bananas aboard seem to be scarce. But they aren’t for us – they are for the monkeys that descend upon us when we get close to the entrance of the cave. They come down off the cliff and wait – not always patiently- for us tourons to come through with their bananas.
They are pretty well behaved, as monkeys go! Onward into the cave, we find the reclining Buddha in all it’s glory. It’s really pretty neat inside here, with different offering areas stuffed into little cave alcoves.
There are monkeys in here too – much bigger than the ones outside- so we steer a little clear of them. We wander around a bit, there are a couple levels of caves we can explore, but we don’t think we have enough time, so we head back outside, giving the monkey sitting on the bench at the top of the stairway a wide berth.
Jennifer is waiting outside, pointing us toward the bus, but we have 20 more minutes. Huh? I thought we only had 10. Oh well, guess we’re on Thai time. LOL. We don’t have enough time to go back to the caves, but we do have time to shoot a couple pictures of the awesome prayer pagoda where they bring the monks to be “ordained.”
Wandering back through the shopping stalls, we don’t find anything exciting. I’m looking for jack fruit, but it must not be in season, or its not a good seller here in the tourist area. Maybe I’ll find some in Sri Lanka or India – or maybe I’ll have to wait until we get back home and I ask the folks at the Asian market across the street to order me some!
Back on the bus, we head toward Nga Bay and our boat ride to see James Bond Island.
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