During our stay in Krabi we had loved seeing the islands of Phang Nga Bay from boat trips, so having arrived in Phuket we were keen to see more from the other side of the bay, so started searching for full day boat tours from Phuket.
We ended up picking one from the holiday tours website Viatour with a Phuket boat tour company called Crystal Sea Marine, which would take us to the famous ‘James Bond Island’ (known to the locals as Kao Phing Kan), with other stops around Phang Nag Bay including some sea canoeing at Hong Island, lunch at the Muslim floating village on Panyee Island and a stop at the Palm Beach Club on Yao Island.
The day started out scorching hot, so we were glad we were going to be out at sea for most of it with a bit of breeze whilst on board the boat at least.
As with all the other excursions we booked on our stay in Thailand, we were collected from our hotel by the tour operator, even though we were an hour or so away from the departure point on the other side of Phuket.
Arriving at Phuket marina, where Crystal Sea Marine are based, we joined a very large group of other tourists all congregating in the marina reception area and were given some coffee and breakfast snacks whilst we waited for all the other passengers to be brought to the marina from all over Phuket.
We were a bit worried to start with that it was too busy and there were too many people here, but it quickly became clear it was being very well organised, and at least if it was popular then it must have a good reputation – or so we hoped!
Soon enough, the tour guides were dividing us all into smaller groups and leading us off separately to different boats.
Once we were on board the boat, it felt a lot less crowded, as the hundreds of people who originally congregated were split between numerous other boats carrying around 30 passengers or so each.
They were large, reasonably modern speedboats, which were more comfortable to spend a day on than the traditional long tail boats we’d been on the previous day – and we were lucky to get a prime seat right at the front.
The first part of the trip was a very pleasant speedboat ride through the unbelievably picturesque Phang Nga Bay, enjoying the beautiful scenery, the cooling breeze taking the edge off the 40-degree heat.
Our first stop was a small island with a beach where we got off and were led by our tour guide up some steps and into a huge underground cave.
It was a pretty big cave that went quite deep into the cliff and it was interesting seeing all the huge stalactites and stalagmites, eventually coming to a viewpoint at the far end of the cave that looked out over a lagoon.
The tour guide on our boat was superb – very competent at keeping a group of 30+ foreign tourists all together and on schedule and we followed her back from the cave to the beach and back on the boat for the next leg of the trip.
This was to a floating pontoon in the sea just off of Hong Island, where the boat was tied up and we were led off to be greeted by a load of local canoe paddle-men, who would take us on a trip around the serene lagoons of Hong Island by inflatable canoe.
There were a lot of other tour boats docking here too so it was busy – but like everything with this excursion – was well organised and we were soon in the canoes, escaping the crowds on the pontoon and floating gently and serenely through the jungle lagoons, our paddle-man showing us the best sights and photo opportunities in this amazingly beautiful place.
We canoed through caves and jungle scenery and eventually under a heart-shaped opening in the tree canopy above us.
This was a sensational place and worth the excursion fee all by itself, but there was still plenty more of the day left ahead.
After the canoe trip, we were back on the boat and off to the most famous of the islands in this part of the bay – Phing Kan island, better known by tourists as James Bond Island, due to it featuring as a location in the James Bond film The Man With the Golden Gun.
It has an absolutely stunning beach with an iconic outcrop of rock which was the backdrop of scenes in the Bond film – and there are paths and steps around a small bay giving you a perfect view and superb photo opportunities.
We spent some time here enjoying the beautiful scenery and cooling off in the sea (until a large sea snake swam casually past us, at which point we made a rapid exit!)
By this time we were having a superb day. The trip being so well organised, the weather being so perfect and the venues we were visiting so mind-blowingly beautiful.
Our next stop was the famous Muslim floating village of Panyee Island, which is where we’d stop for a buffet lunch.
Panyee Island has a village built by a local Muslim community on stilts in the sea. There’s a large restaurant area, where we had a very filling buffet lunch, after which we could take a walk around the floating market looking at souvenirs and local products being sold by the ‘sea gypsies’.
Then it was on to our next stop of the day, after having had a bit of a whirlwind tour of islands in the morning, it was great to have a couple of hours at the beautiful Palm Beach Club on Yao Island, where we could relax on loungers on the beautiful sand with drinks from the bar and have a good couple of hours to take things easy, sunbathing and swimming in the unbelievably warm water.
It felt all too soon that the day began to come to an end, with the sun lowering in the sky and the tour guides rounding everyone up from the beach to get back on the boats to head back to the marina.
A final high-speed blast across the bay took us back to where we’d started out at Phuket marina, where we disembarked and were shown to a minibus that took us all the way back across the island right to the front door of our hotel again.
When we’re doing boat excursions on holiday, we always tend to try to find private tours where it’s just us in the boat, but there weren’t many of those around Phuket that we could find.
But this trip with Crystal Sea Marine was so well organised – and took us to such incredible places – that it didn’t matter at all and we were more than happy to be on a bigger group excursion.
The total cost for four of us was about £200 ($250) and considering that included a very decent sized lunch and door-to-door transfers right from our hotel, that was extremely good value for money.
The islands and beaches around Phang Nga bay really are out of this world and between this and the other boat trips we did from Krabi, we felt we’d got to seen the best of the region in a really cost-effective way.
Crystal Sea Marine boat tours from Phuket are certainly highly recommended based on our experience of this day!