Phuket Series #04: Island Tour

I went on the Sim's Island Tour on my second day. Those who have been to Phuket will _definitely_ know of Sim's Island Tour. I'm not sure if the guide I had was actually Sim himself, but checking with a colleague who was there recently and went on the same tour, we seemed to have had the same guide. Skinny, dark, crew cut and Thai accented English. Wait....that seems to describe a lot of Thais. He has this weird way of pronouncing "ladies and gents". He'll shorten it to "lay-gents". Which totally baffled me for the first 5 minutes.

You'll be lavishly praised for choosing to tour with Sim's. He'll assure you that you're really savvy, you're in safe hands, he has got a first-aid kit onboard his bus which no other rival agents have. He has got a canvas bag full of plastic bags to store your expensive (cost more than half his year's pay - so he says) cameras, video-cameras and valuables during the boat ride or when it rains. And he proudly states that his is the ONLY tour that provides raincoats for all. Well....some truth in their...as I later found out...

Anyhow, the tour started with a visit to a Monkey Cave Temple on Phuket itself.

The temple was so named because of the numerous monkeys (actually they were macaques). They temple itself was within a limestone cave and features a number of stalactites and stalagmites. Try searching for the 10 monkeys found in the photo below:

Next we took a long boat ride through the Phang-Nga conservation area.

This included a visit to the famous "James Bond Island" which is actually Ko Phing Kan.

The main highlight was the limestone feature (Ko Tapu or "nail" island) that was used as a location shoot for James Bond - The Man With The Golden Gun. It was the hideout of Scaramanga.

After the tour of James Bond Island, the long boat headed off to a sea gypsy village. This will appeal mainly the non-south east asians because the village was nothing more than a huge kelong. Like Kukup.

Accordingly to Sim, the gypsies were using the scarce land that they have for burials. So they just extended the real estate by living on stilts.

It was during the sea gypsy tour when it started pouring! And lucky for us with Sim, he provided us with raincoats. Well, Sim was certainly not the only tour agent to have raincoats for sure, but we were all glad he did.

All in, the tour which cost 650 baht wasn't too bad. Had plenty of chances to take photos and it was unhurried in most cases.

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#01: Introduction
#02: General
#03: Food
#04: Island Tour
#05: Vegetarian Festival
#06: Muay Thai
#07: Firecracker Special
#08: Afterthoughts