An island escape...

Finally I have given up the hope of being able to catch up on my blogging in a chronological way.... I'll jump straight to the last weekend and ad some photos and notes on the earlier part of my stay later.
After staying in Phuket for three weeks now and getting a lot of work done at the university (I'm actually not kidding!), we had a well deserved break last weekend. An excursion with some sort of outreach activity to involve high school teachers in environmental science education took us to a wonderful tropical island for two days. The island is a nature reserve and camping and facilities are managed by a kind of national park service.





We had this wonderful beach to ourselves except for one crazy hour in the afternoon when the tourist boats boats arrived and the people had to complete their 'sunbathing and swimming' that was promised in the brochures...





The people from the national park took a part of our group for a snorkeling expedition in a long-tail boat. We didn't see much, actually nothing at all, due to bad visibility but had a nice swim enjoying the scenery of Phang Nga bay. On the way back, however, the guide checked the fish traps that supply the island with fresh seafood - they did some amazing cooking there. The most exciting catch was a thorny star - a nasty fellow that overpopulates areas and eats entire coral reefs... After discussing that story, I believe, this particular specimen now serves as a souvenier for one of the members of the group.


Spending the night on the island also had the distinct advantage of being able to enjoy the gorgeous sunset....


The next day our boat took us on a tour to explore Phang Nga bay - small limestone islands steeply rising out of the ocean. Doesn't this look like.....?


Yep, it was the location where the Bond movie (Man with the golden gun) was shot! From the movie, I had a much more imposing formation in mind (don't the fly a plane around the island?). It was in fact much smaller than expected but still very impressive.