Phuket Paradise?

Another day travelling followed the chaos of the day before. These travelling days are pretty much nothing days. You get up, get a taxi,tuk tuk, bus then train, plane then bus, train and taxi at the other end so it's all you do just to get somewhere. The Bangkok visit was brief but hectic but we were definitely ready to get out of the city, mainly because all we've mostly been to are cities so it feel good to get away. Bangkok's no bad place though. There's still loads we could've seen but I doubt I'll go back in the next 30 years!
Our next destination was the island of Phuket and for a few days we were living it up. We escaped out of the shoestring backpacker budget to stay in a decent hotel and go on yet another tour. Phuket itself is very touristy but mainly a gorgeous island with long beaches. Well it was where we were staying, Patong beach. The only problem is that with the tourism comes the constant hassle of vendors trying to sell you suits, fake surfing clothes, jet ski hire and tuk-tuk rides. It does get annoying, especially the tuk-tuks as they just drive up and down the same two streets beeping their horns at every single tourist to see if they need a ride.
Our hotel was round the corner from the beach and was fair flash, for us on this trip anyway. It had a pool and breakfast included aswell as cable tv in the room! Oh the luxury.
We headed out into the main bar and club streets at night to see what went on here. Mainly prostitution and lady-boy action along with fat old drunk blokes trying to see what they could get. The women are very persistent, Laura left my side for about 10 seconds and straight off you could see the Thai women begin to gather. Frightening.
As we were living it up here we decided we didn't want to risk the food at the dodgy looking street restaurants and headed into a flash place with gorgeous food and a cool band playing classic 70's rock tunes.....with a Thai accent. Great stuff.
The next day we were really not looking forward to, another tour. I just wanted to get it over with but from the off this tour was much better. It was touted as the 'James Bond Island' tour. Of which I still don't know the real island's name. But it's the island featured in 'The man with the golden gun', I think, Scaramander's lair. Either way it looked stunning. We took a brief stop on the way to a cave temple which looked pretty cool, loads of monkeys climbing around all over the place and a giant reclining Buddha inside. Stalagmites and stalactite's aplenty and I let a couple of young Thai boys lead me into a dark cave, sounds like fun I hear you say, but it turned out a neat little walk around and in between ancient rock. Of course a tip was required, I should've known.
Then it was onto a long-tail boat for a ride to the island. This was unbelievable. I mean really. The landscape of this country is truly spectacular and quite hard to describe. Lots of lush green islands make up the backdrop between tropical waterways were crocodiles and fisherman inhabit. Huge rock formations and narrow cave passages dotted along the route with beauty in every direction. For some reason I just didn't think we'd be seeing anything like this on the trip but here we are. Tremendous. James Bond Island itself was stunning also. In the bay is a narrow, but tall, rock which has worn away near the bottom but acquired greenery up to the top. Totally tropical. I did recognise it from the film but only vaguely. We had half an hour to wander around the island, it was tiny but full of interesting views from caves and the jetty round the other side next to a narrow beach. Crystal blue water, gorgeous green islands, no clouds in the smooth blue sky. Amazing. All this for hardly any money too!
Back on the long-tail boat we were taken for lunch on a floating boat island. Hmmm this sounds familiar. But as it turns out this fishing village on stilts was superb. Out in the ocean in the middle of no-where this village community survived off fishing and the tour groups that stopped by for food and the crappy tat they sold. The food though. Oh the food. Was soo good. You couldn't get fresher fish than this and it was cooked to perfection. I was I could gorge on that again right now rather than the crap we've been eating in Australia!
And in true from on the way back at the end of the day we had to face a couple of 'education and shopping' excursions. This meant a visit to a cashew nut shop and another jewellery shop/factory - apparently the biggest in the world, just like the biggest jewellery factory in the world in northern Chang Mai, so we were told. Odd. The first, a cashew nut shop, was actually fair interesting. There was a worker in there going through the process of getting the cashew. No wonder they're soo bloody expensive! They have to be picked from a tree attached to a large fruit, which I think they made the god awful cashew nut drink from! Then they have to crack the large shell with a giant nutcracker, you have to do it by hand because of the odd shape of the shell, then they have to prize the nut out and clean it off, throw it on a pile so it can be roasted for 3 hours. What a palava. I bought two packs of nuts in sympathy, and because I love em' too!
The jewellery factory was a chore, an absolute comedy video had to be sat through before entering the shop with our helpful store assistant. No matter how much we told this woman we had no money she would not leave us alone. We made a sharp dash for the bar for a couple of cheap as chips beers. Not bad I thought. More excellent food at night and we were off again the next day for true paradise, 2 days on Phi Phi island (pronounced 'pee-pee' but sounds much worse than it really was).
Below, James Bond Island and the famous rock.
Above, the view just next to our dinner table on one of the many gorgeous islands.