Determined to relax during our time in Thailand, after all the time spent on the move in the last year, we decided that we would escape from Ao Chalong  for a couple of days and visit the nearby island of Ko Yao Yai. A couple of hours out the wind died, which seems normal here, an early wind which dies in the late morning. This of course leads us to do short days, but luckily there are plenty of anchorages that we can visit. So we stopped in three bays, Aos, on Ko Yao Yai. Ao Lo Pa Lai at the south end a quiet bay with a fishing village, Ao Lo Pa Raet, an open bay with resorts and shops, and Ao Son a well sheltered bay with a creek to explore and a couple of small bars on the beach. This was as we wanted, a restful week. Then we returned to Chalong for laundry, provisions and time for Sarah to catch up with Dan, Shelley and Cam before they went back to UK.
Laundry and shopping done and a few boat jobs and we were ready to go again, this time to visit the must do tourist sites in the Ao Phang Nga National Park. This National Park covers an area of 400 square km north of Phuket, it is a bay with many pinnacle islands and the largest mangrove area in Thailand. It is mainly quite shallow and it would be possible to anchor almost anywhere, you do have to navigate a bit carefully to avoid the really shallow patches and also avoid the many fishing floats around. Some of the floats have flags on but many are just plastic bottles. Unlike Malaysia where the floats are in pairs with a net in between, sometimes at surface level, these mark the end of nets which are down on the sea floor. We have watched the fishermen pulling them in and now feel quite confident that we can pass the floats quite close with no risk of catching a net on our propellor.
First stop on the way was Ko Nak Ha Yai where we just anchored off the beach for the night. Then on into the National Park, an anchorage off Ko Phanak for the night and a look around the various sea level caves. Bat cave can be entered by dinghy and we waited for a lull in the tourist boats before going in. The tourist boats bring stacks of kayaks and use them to take their passengers into the caves and around the cliffs. The water was a bit too high for us to exit into the Hong at the end of the cave but we could see into it. Hong means room and is a chamber open to the sky usually with vegetation growing up the cliffs and maybe a beach. We looked into some of the other caves but our dinghy was too large to go in very far. The following day we went two miles on to Ko Hong, where we paid for a canoe trip around the Hong. In Ko Hong there were a number of chambers and caves with formations in them most of which look like elephants, according to our boatman. Back on board and we were approached by the rangers to pay our national park fee, 300 Baht each, the receipt says it’s for five days so not too bad.

Looking into Ao Phang Naga National Park from Ko Phanak.

Into the Bat cave, there were hundreds of quite large bats hanging from the roof. Although we looked the water was too high for us to exit into the Hong.

The cave entrance to Ko Hong, entry by canoe only.

After the first chamber you exit into a lagoon.

Moving on to Ko Yang we found ourselves a good anchorage for the night, but first a trip to Ko Phing Kang or, as it’s known to tourists, James Bond Island. This is a really popular tourist spot, where some of ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ was filmed. We had no desire to go ashore and join the big queue of people but did use our dinghy to circumnavigate the island and take photos.
Our night at Ko Yang was relatively peaceful with just two other boats in the anchorage. 

This was to be our anchorage at Ko Yang shared with this catamaran, Best Life, and a charter yacht.

James Bond Island, you can see the line of people making their way round to get a picture of the pinnacle.

After a lazy morning, we used the rising tide to make our way upriver to Ko Panyee with its Muslim stilt fishing village. We had hoped to go ashore here for a meal, but we arrived too late in the day as the restaurants cater for the hordes of tourists and are closed by 6.00. We did go ashore in the morning before the tourist boats arrived and had a wander around, there are so many small shops selling pearls, shells, coconut bowls and, of course, white cheesecloth clothes. We had a quick look round, a cup of coffee and left using the last of the ebb tide and a bit of wind to start making our way back to Ao Chalong. I think that Ko Panyee had the noisiest long tail boats that we have come across so it was a good idea to leave before they really got started for the day.

Ko Panyee village and one of the small boats the locals use for fast travel, they are similar to small boats we saw in Northern Borneo.

The village mosque, there was only one, unlike Indonesia where even a small village might have a number.

The village is built close under the island cliffs so has very little land for building, most of it is built on stilts. The football pitch however is floating.