Sunday 8 November – Another hong

It was high tide at 8am so we waited for the tide to go down a bit, the tourist boats all did the same thing, at 9am two huge boats full of kayaks arrived. We had no option but to follow the crowds. We paddled to the cave in our kayak, we had quite a lot of turbulent water to negotiate with the wakes from the boats, we know we will struggle to get back into the kayak if we capsize, which keeps us very focused! We joined a long line of kayakers through the 120m tunnel. It is called bat cave, living up to its name there were a lot of bats when you were able to look up. Disappointingly when we got to the other side the tide was still too high for us to go right into the hong, it was a snake of kayaks going to the end and back. You must have to get the tides absolutely right as too low and there is not enough water to paddle easily. It explains now why they were doing it late yesterday in the dark.

We took off as soon as we got back to PolePole, heading for another set of islands, Ko Roi Hong. It only took an hour to get there, where there were a couple of charter catamarans. We headed to the beach in the kayak around 4pm when it was a bit cooler, it was really low tide. Thank goodness we took our beach shoes as we had to walk over a lot of old coral rubble to get to the beach. The tide is a 2m range and with a gentle slope the sea goes out a long way. It was easy to walk into the hong which was also very impressive. We had a huge sea eagle circling above.

An American guy swam in from one of the boats, we got chatting, he is from California, Rowan asked if he was celebrating Trumps hammering. He was, but he also said we should understand the next two months while Trump has the power to do whatever he wants are the most scary. He thinks WW3 is looming – he seemed exceptionally normal, so that was a bit sobering, especially with the English press telling everyone to prep for disasters.

We thought it might be a noisy night with two lots of catamarans rafted together, but they were all pretty middle aged and well behaved. A huge charter cat with local crew started getting very close to us, they must have been dragging thankfully they moved away, definitely Russians on board, or some slav language. The weather is definitely getting a bit cooler with a bit of wind, we don’t need the aircon on at night, it is wonderful to have fresh air blowing into the cabin.