The Island Tours of Phuket – Part 1 on The Caves Tour

Phuket is a much bigger island than we anticipated. In fact, we were pretty surprised to find ourselves 45 minutes away from the popular, touristy areas. We weren’t prepared for its size and felt a little stranded in our hotel. However, if I were ever to be stranded at a hotel, I’d pick this one. We had everything we needed and more.

Although Phuket itself was great, the best part of our time here were the side trips we took to some of the smaller islands nearby. We were told there are more than 130 small islands within two hours of Phuket. We only  made it to a few.

The first adventure was a caves tour. It took about 1 1/2 hours by boat to reach a cluster of uninhabited islands where we disembarked from the big boat onto canoes. We had a guide that paddled us through different caves and around some of these islands.

This is by far the best tour we’ve taken while on our travels. That’s saying a lot especially considering the fact that it was raining like crazy and we had to float in and out of caves (you all know how much I like caves).

Yes, those are bats. The guide told us to keep our mouths closed to prevent bat poop falling into our mouths. I’m serious.

Not all of the caves were overtaken by bats. In others we saw beautiful colors and awesome shapes. From our canoes we saw a lot of wildlife living in the water and on the islands. We saw sea spiders, lizards (of course) and a family of long-tailed monkeys…baby monkeys and all.

Some of the caves we toured were so small we had to lie down and suck it in.

The neat little object you see there is a traditional Thai offering that people make in November for Loy Kratong Day–a celebration of the full moon in the twelfth lunar month. Made of banana leaves and orchids, the idea is to take the offering to the river and send it off with a wish. The celebration comes at a time during the year when water levels are high and the dry season begins.

Here we are sending off the offering that we made ourselves (with the help of our guide). The last of the caves we toured was after dark. This was so we could see the water sparkle from all the phosphorecence in and to send our offering with lit candles and incense. If it hadn’t been raining we could’ve gotten video, but trust us, it was beautiful.

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