On Christmas Eve we visited the gibbon sanctuary where they home orphaned animals and attempt to rehabilitate them for release into the wild. They are absolutely delightful animals that move by brachiating…swinging on their arms rather than using their legs. They are particularly endearing as babies and in demand by photographers to use as attractions for tourist photographs. Although this is forbidden it still happens, the babies are still taken from the wild and in the process many adults are killed as gibbons live in extended family groups and many adults try to fend off the poachers from stealing their babies and are shot.  Many of the new ‘owners’ are cruel, some start to find a growing gibbon a nuisance and some realise that they have done the wrong thing. The upshot is many damaged orphans which was why we sponsored one as a Christmas present for Peter!

Peter arrived back from his adventures on Christmas Eve, so we decided to go to one of the islands off the East Coast to spend Christmas Day in the sun and have a pleasant barbecued lunch. Unfortunately the Thai weather had not got the Christmas message and the wind gradually increased to Force 7 plus. The anchorage became dangerously rough so we upped anchor and ran before the wind in the gathering gloom to a safe mooring near the local aquarium. Our Christmas day thus became a rather hasty meal followed by a rough run 10 miles southward!

We then decided to explore the touristy west coast of Phuket and found a couple of beautiful anchorages with clear water for snorkelling and even caught a few squid for the first time.

Beautiful deserted beach in Phuket.

Hattie in her Thai fishermen’s trousers but note the bag that she used in Thailand…upstaging the tourists with her own favoured holiday spot.

There was an interesting small river that ran behind this beach which we explored by dinghy. It was almost like being back in Southwold, with the fishing boats moored on rickety staging, albeit with slightly warmer temperatures.

Much of this part of Phuket was scarred by tin mining in the past but they are doing a good job of returning the lakes and wasteland to tourist developments of one sort or another. For instance there is at least one golf course and there are plans to build a much needed new marina. We had difficulty finding marina berths and they are surprisingly expensive too. Malaysia is now a much cheaper place to keep a boat, although it has yet to develop the range of services that Phuket is well known for. Phuket is actually getting full of boats that have reached this far and are now stuck as a result of the piracy in the Indian Ocean. We have met 3 owners who are shipping their boats to the Med and many more are considering spending the £30,000 shipping fee to avoid the ocean passages around South Africa. Needless to say there is a feeling that not enough is being done to stop the piracy!

For New Year we had been recommended to go to the tourist centre of Patong. This is an amazing tourist trap full to the brim of every diversion (and a few perversions too) that many wish for. We avoided It and stayed on the boat after a quick shopping trip (to Tescos!) to await the fireworks. These started at 7o’clock and went on non-stop until the early hours of the morning. There must have been literally tonnes of fireworks let off in a fairly haphazard way all night with a tremendous crescendo at midnight. We very much like a good firework display but it is good to have a start, middle and importantly an end to these events.

Incidentally the dots of light in the sky are not stars but some of the thousands of lanterns let adrift from the beach. The lanterns are large (nearly 3 feet) paper affairs fuelled by burning paraffin, they are very traditional and look beautiful as they go high into the sky to drift on the wind …and occasionally fall into the sea. Our sails survived!

Before the fireworks had really begun, Hattie left us for her long journey home after 3 weeks that went far too fast for all of us. Sadly Peter was out of action for nearly a week with a nasty reaction to taking his anti-malaria medication (doxycycline) then falling asleep shortly afterwards. This gave him a severe form of heartburn that left him in pain every time he tried to eat. A visit to a good local doc confirmed our diagnosis and eventually he recovered but rather thinner as these photos show.

Thailand’s Andaman coast is just stunning with tropical blue waters and dramatic limestone islands full of caves and sometimes with ‘ hongs’ (hong means a room open to the sky) entered through shallow sea caves. After New Year we cleared out of Thailand to start our return to Pangkor. We had just enough time to visit some of these attractive limestone islands that Peter had not seen such as Phi Phi Lei.

We also visited Koh Muk where there is a limestone tunnel that goes beneath the cliff for about 80 metres into a hong – this collapsed cavern has almost sheer sides with its own tidal beach and being open to the sky it has a unique flora skirting the beach and clinging to the fabulous limestone cliffs. The tunnel is the most exciting part as it is long enough to be pitch dark and has bats clinging to the ceiling. The most eerie thing is that waves crashing into the caves to one side of the tunnel make a very scary thumping noise that complements the subterranean experience.

Looking up through the hong ‘s sky-light.

After a night at Koh Muk we continued our way south stopping at the most southerly Thai Island, once a penal establishment but now a National park and covered in dense primary growth rain forest.

We were sad to be leaving Thailand after a much too brief stay. The scenery is stunning the people smiley and the climate excellent with much less humidity (at least whilst we were there) than Malaysia. On the downside it is becoming more expensive to keep a boat here and surprisingly few of the people speak much English…but then our Thai is not up to much either.

Beautiful, beautiful Thailand.