Phang Nga Bay

IslandsPhang Nga,Thailand

Hundreds of limestone towers on a jade Thai sea, several hollow — canoed into at low tide through sea caves that open on lagoons inside rock.

September·Quiet month

Aug–Oct

The wettest stretch, September into October. Three places close from 1 August to 30 September to recover: Ko Lawa Yai, the bay's only swimming beach, together with Ko Boi Yai and Ao Khian. James Bond Island, the mangroves and the hongs stay open.

Year-round The karst towers, mangrove channels and tide-locked hongs stand year-round, the sea holds 27-30°C, and the plankton can spark on any moonless night; clarity, rain and closures move with the season.

Phang Nga Bay is a drowned forest of stone. Hundreds of limestone towers stand bolt upright out of a calm jade-green sea between Phuket and the Thai mainland. Some are bare needles a few metres across; others carry a tuft of rainforest on top and hide caverns that open into lagoons sealed inside the rock. The water between them is shallow and almost never rough, so a small boat can go anywhere. The bay has been a national park since 1981 and holds the largest surviving stretch of mangrove forest in Thailand — a maze of channels you can motor into for an hour without seeing open water. Its most photographed rock is Ko Tapu, a 20-metre needle standing off Khao Phing Kan, the island the world started calling James Bond Island after a 1974 Bond film used it as a villain's hideout. A day on the water goes slowly. A long-tail boat threads the mangrove channels, its engine clattering off the walls. The bay's real secret is its hongs, from the Thai word for room. Slip a sea canoe through a low cave mouth, duck under a dripping ceiling of stalactites, and you surface inside a courtyard with sheer walls on every side and a circle of sky above. The water in there is completely still and the noise of the bay stops at the entrance. You can only get in at the tides that leave the cave mouths open, which is why the hongs stayed a local secret until the guide John Gray canoed into one in 1989. At dusk the wide view comes from the Samet Nangshe viewpoint, where headland after headland fades into layers of haze. Ko Panyi, a Muslim fishing village of a few hundred families, is built entirely on stilts against the base of a cliff, with no land under it at all.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The hong lagoons open only around certain tides — check a tide table before booking a canoe trip, because the low cave mouths seal shut at high water and close the rooms off.
James Bond Island is busiest late morning, when the Phuket day-boats converge — go at first light, or start from the Phang Nga side to catch the bay at its quietest.
Samet Nangshe rewards both sunrise and sunset, but arrive before first light — the railing fills fast, and the layered headlands look sharpest while mist still hangs over the mangroves.
The bioluminescence shows only on a truly dark night — a bright moon washes out the plankton sparks, so time a 'Hong by Starlight' paddle to the moonless days of the month.

Things to do

1
Canoe into a tide-locked hong
Paddle a low-slung sea canoe through a cave mouth and surface inside a cliff-ringed lagoon open only to the sky. A guide reads the tide, because the entrance seals shut at high water.
2
Ride a long-tail into the bay
Ride out into the bay in a painted long-tail boat, sitting up near the bow as the limestone towers close in around you and the mangrove channels open ahead. The engine clatters and echoes off the cliff walls, and the air stays thick with warm salt the whole way.
3
Walk the stilt lanes of Ko Panyi
Tie up at the fishing village built on posts over the water, where narrow plank lanes run between houses, shops and a gold-domed mosque, all of it pressed against the base of a sheer cliff. The village has a floating football pitch, built by local children in the 1980s on a raft of scrap timber because there was no ground to play on. The team it produced went on to win regional titles.
4
See the whole bay from Samet Nangshe and from the air
Climb to the Samet Nangshe hilltop viewpoint before dawn and watch headland after headland lift out of the mist as the light comes up over the bay. From the air the scale finally reads: dozens of rainforest-topped towers scattered across tidal channels the colour of milky jade, far more of them than you pass on any boat trip.

Nearby

64 km