Handpicked experience · Phuket
★ 4.3Phuket, Thailand
A village on stilts because its founders were barred from owning land, and lagoons you can only enter when the tide allows.
Hop on the traditional Thai long tail boat while you explore the beautiful Phang Nga Bay.
Make like 007 and kayak to the iconic James Bond Island, where you can swim, take photos and recreate some of the scenes from the movie!
Fall in love with the pristine beauty of the James Bond Island and its surroundings.
Discover hidden sea caves, swim in beautiful lagoons and so much more when you tour Khao Ping Kan by Thai long tail boat.
Lagoons that exist only because a cave roof fell in
A settlement with almost no ground beneath it
A guided paddle into places a boat cannot follow
Limestone towers seen from water level rather than a deck
A meal in a village rather than at a tourist jetty
A day in Phang Nga Bay by longtail boat: sea canoeing into caves and hidden lagoons, a shore stop at James Bond Island, and lunch in a village built entirely over the water.
Koh Panyee has around fifteen hundred residents and almost no ground. The founding families were Malay fishing people who arrived in the late eighteenth century, and the reason the village sits on stilts over the sea rather than on the shore is that, as foreigners, they could not hold land. So they built on water, which nobody owned.
The village's other claim is better known locally than abroad. After watching the 1986 World Cup on a borrowed television, the children decided to form a football team despite having nowhere to play, and built a pitch by lashing together scrap wood and old fishing rafts. It floated, it wobbled, and the team that grew out of it became one of the most successful youth sides in southern Thailand.
The word hong means room, and that is literally what these are: cave systems inside the karst towers whose roofs collapsed long ago, leaving lagoons open to the sky and enclosed by cliff on every side.
You reach them through tunnels at the base of the rock, and the tide decides everything. At high water the entrances are underwater and unusable; at low water there is headroom, and even then you may be asked to lie flat in the canoe while your guide paddles you under. This is why the guide paddles rather than you, and why the running order of the day is set by the tide table rather than the itinerary.
Khao Phing Kan appeared in a Bond film in 1974, and the slim limestone needle offshore — Ko Tapu — has carried the name ever since.
It is worth looking at properly, because it is a rock in trouble. Wave action has undercut the base far more narrowly than the top, and decades of visitors landing on and around it caused enough damage that access to the needle itself is now prohibited. You will see it from the beach and from the water, and that is deliberate.
National park and pier charges are collected on the day unless your booking states otherwise, so carry local notes. Bring a dry bag: canoes take water, and so do longtails.
Wear something you can swim in, plus shoes that survive wet rock. There is little shade in the canoes, and the reflected light off the water is stronger than it feels.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Its founders were Malay fishing families who arrived in the late eighteenth century and, as foreigners, could not own land. So they built on the sea, which nobody owned.
Yes, and it was patched and rebuilt for years afterwards. A pitch made of salvage does not survive monsoon season without attention.
The team that grew out of it became one of the most successful youth sides in southern Thailand, which is not what anyone expected from a pitch that wobbled.
A collapsed cave. The tower is riddled with passages, and where a roof gave way the sky came in — leaving a pool of still water walled off from the sea by the rock around it.
Because the entrance tunnels are low. You may be asked to lie flat in the canoe while you are taken under, which is not something to attempt while steering.
The tide. At high water the cave entrances are submerged and unusable, so the schedule follows the tide table rather than the itinerary.
No. Access to Ko Tapu is prohibited after decades of visitor damage, and wave action has undercut its base badly. You see it from the beach and the water.
Charges taken at the pier and inside the park boundary. Small notes are easier than large ones at a floating ticket window.