We've arrived in Phuket, Thailand, and are staying at the new "The Senses Resort". Wow, very nice place, perched high up above and overlooking the city.


We have a day and a half before going to board the MV Pawara liveaboard diving trip in the Similan Islands, and I had plans to rent a car & drive around a few places. However, despite my efforts to book the car a couple months ago, it has been unsuccessful. Being the New Year's holiday, the town is utterly packed, and the rental companies were either sold out or didn't care to rent me a car for just 1 day -- understandably so.


The plans were perfectly aligned with a tour, and we barely caught it in time. Only difference is we'd be with a group instead of solo, which was fine with us. We were paired with a family from Russia, and while they were all very nice & pleasant, Bobby's only complaint of the day was having to hear their conversations in the back for the long drives and not understanding a word. The kids were cute & feisty, constantly singing cute songs, but once again, we didn't understand any of it !


Our first stop was Wat Tham Suwan Khuha, and Wat Tham means "cave temple". The large reclining Buddha is situated in the rather grand cave -- very cool. And then there are the monkeys, running wild and collecting food from any and all tourists stopping by. We didn't have anything with us to attract the monkeys over, so sure enough the vendors had some bottles of peanuts. And back we go, but the first couple monkeys had no interest in the peanuts. I could hear them saying "hey kid, people are feeding those same peanuts 18 times a day, how about some Cheetos ! " Shortly after, there were a few monkeys that were making connections with Bobby, and he developed some new friendships again.



We took a longtail boat out of Phang Nga bay, and visited Khao Phing Kan, which is better known as "James Bond island'. It was featured in the 1974 James Bond movie, The Man with the Golden Gun. Nice views, and we walked around the island for the brief stop.


We also went on a kayak/sea canoe stop at another island, and received a pleasant & relaxing ride around that island and through some caves.


The main place we wanted to see though was Koh Panyee, a very small floating fishing village, home to 1,485 Muslim people from 315 families. The village is less than 400 meters long, and not an inch of soil. Over the last 200 years since the village was founded, a community has built up over the shallow waters to the south of the limestone cliff/rock that makes up Panyee Island. At low tide, the waters are shallow enough to stand in, which must aid in building these houses, all supported by a network of stilts.


Several months ago, Bobby & I watched a Youtube video that's a really cool story about their aspirations to develop a football (soccer) club in their community and compete at tournaments.
Rather than me explaining the history & background, go ahead and watch the video that we originally saw. The video is 5 minutes long, and gives you a better feel for what took place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kk AWU
You'll enjoy it.


So, we were anxious to see the soccer field behind this story, and got to see a short glimpse of their community, as well as the old & new soccer fields (no kids playing soccer while we were there though). We also stopped by their school, which was in session. I can't imagine how the teacher is keeping their attention, with constant tourists walking by & peeking their heads in (including me) !


The village's primary economy was fishing for many years, and now it has become secondary (still about 40%) to tourism with many boats bringing tourists each day. Mission accomplished, we got to see what we were hoping for.



Long ride back due to the huge amount of congestion on a 2 lane road, the only road back to Patong Beach. More Russian singing from the kids, but we all survived and all was good -- ready for our venture out to the crazy nightlife of Phuket ! Bobby's seeming to really enjoy our time over here, all over SE Asia.