This whole area perhaps 100km sq of the coast has hundreds of these rocky cliffs, completely uninhabitable islands that are thrust up out of the land and sea like pillars as much as 1000 ft high. It is an area where scenes from a James Bond movie were filmed and truly looks like something from out of this world. But first back to the fishing village....about 200 households on stilts, a small mosque, school with lots of kids everywhere, out in boats having paddling races with each other. We stayed in a small bamboo walled cabin and along with another couple from Germany seemed to be the only other foreigners in the village (overnight that is). During the day there are a number of large restaurants on stilts filled with day trippers in speed boats from nearby Phuket! Kind of surreal.
Oh yes there were perhaps 3-4 sailing boats anchored off the village and then one small 18 foot or so strange looking, forelorn sailboat tied to a pier. Some time later a late 20-ish looking guy with a long beard saunters down and turns out he's the boat owner. A Slovenian who has been on the sea for 2.5 yrs. He says he bought the 40 yr old boat in Budapest and had to patch a bunch of holes in it before setting out. I asked if he had any horrifying experiences and he said the worst he experienced in that time was a 40 knot gale for a day. All in all he made it seem like not much of a big deal to sail around the world in such a craft which seemed a lot less comfortable than even our little boat back home which we'd hesitate to spend more than 3 days on in the Ottawa river!
So the next morning we departed on a small-ish local boat for a trip around these dramatic islands for the day. Including a drop by the famed 'James Bond' island. Hopefully some of these photos will go at least partially towards conveying how dramatic this area of the coast really is.
Islands and rock outcroppings like you see in the photo below were abounding everywhere!
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