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Carol flew in from UK on 13 Feb for a week on board together with our friends Charles and Sue Parry, who were last aboard in Sicily in 2010.  The plan was to visit some of the amazing limestone karst island in the magnificent Phang Nga Bay, for which Phuket is famous.  The islands are Koh in Thai and the lagoons inside the islands are called a Hong.  The only problem with this wonderful place is that it is a very popular tourist area and the visitors are taken out to the islands in very fast speed boats or long tails (local Thai  motorised boats – more of which later) that are very noisy and leave a big wake.  Obviously we cannot expect to have such a place to ourselves but the tourist boats make no allowances for sailing yachts or yachts at anchor often passing within a few metres of them/us or any fishing boats in the location.   Some of the more popular sites, such as the Island that featured in the James Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun”, are very crowded and best avoided.

Tashi Delek was anchored on the south west coast of Phuket in Kata Nui Bay and the traffic to and from the airport was horrendous.  So quite late at night, after some dramatic and very wet attempts to get the dingy off the beach we managed to get everyone and their luggage aboard.  The next morning we motored round Phuket to the surprisingly Muslim majority island of Koh Yat Yai for Carol to meet up with our very dear friends Tom and Susie on the yacht Adina, in the aptly named “No Beer Bay” (more of that later – also).

Over the next few days we visited Koh Phanak and Koh Roi, both of which had internal lagoons.  The former entered by a tunnel at mid-tide and the latter by an archway at low tide.  The tide timings are very important, especially for the tunnel otherwise it is impossible to pass under the inside entrance to the Hong itself.  On the last day we sailed back to Ao Po marina for a night ashore so that Carol could catch up with our other close friends from the Pacific, Chris and Sara on Tulu.

Phang Nga Bay

Charles and Sue approach the Koh Phanak tunnel

Inside the 100m long tunnel

The Koh Phanak Hong

Arriving off Koh Roi

Carol at ease with the dinghy

Carol amongst the mangrove inside the Koh Roi Hong

The beautiful setting of Koh Roi