Phang Nga and Patong Lady Boy Show, Phuket, Thailand

Phang Nga Bay looks exactly the way I pictured Thailand. One hundred percent breathtaking! Huge rock islands jutting out of the water and bordered by sandy beaches. The actual town of Phang Nga is tiny, but its main streets provides cheap accomodation and tasty street food and the locals are really lovely and accomodating so it's a nice place to spot off for a day or two. I took a long boat tour around the bay with Nathan from NZ. Since there were only two of us we had a lot more control over how much time we spent at the various stops and got to skip the more touristy places completely. We puttered around the bay and then stopped to kayak some caves. Didn't actually get to paddle, ust sit in an inflattable 'kayak' (term used very loosely), but our guide was hilarious (insisted we take excessive amounts of pictures and kept telling us what a great choice we made for our honeymoon lol) so we had a good time. Caves were pretty cool. The rocks were covered in jagged edges with seashells imprinted in them. Very interesting formations. From there we got back on the long boat and headed to James Bond Island where they filmed 'The Man with the Golden Gun'. Wasn't horribly interesting. Was very beautiful, but so are all the other islands and this one is swarming with tourists and pushy vendors selling junk. Back on the boat we headed to a tiny island where the boat driver handed us headlamps then pointed at a ladder that lead into a cave (he didn't speak any English so that was the extent of our instructions). Cave was great. We were the only ones there so had the run of the place. Came back out and had a tasty lunch on the tiny beach. After lunch we stopped at a muslim fishing village. Whole village is set on stilts around ahuge rock island that comes straight outof the water. Unfortunately, it has been totally turned into a tourist market. All the usual trinkets and souvenirs. I heard Muslim and automatically put on a long sleeve highnecked shirt. Turned out it wasn't necessary since one tourist was in her bra in the middle of the market trying on souvenir t-shirts. So much for a modest muslim village. We lasted about 5 minutes before heading back to the boat. Overall, awesome day trip.

Hat Patong 2nd Night
I ended up back in Hat Patong the day before my flight out of Thailand. Decided to wander down the main strips of bars and stores. Soon spotted huge gaggle of lady boys dressed a la Birdcage. Ended up going to the show (figured I had to check it out while in Thailand), but quickly became apparent that despite the dozens of people lining up for pics witht he lady boys no one actually singned up for the show. So I took a seat with the 2 other spectators (2!) thinking this was going to be really awkward, but it actually worked out really well because the 2 rather large Americans acted as a buffer so I wans't subjected to any 'in your face' performances. The show wasn't half bad. It was a mix of actual singing (which was good), lip singing (absolutely terrible) and mediocre to good dancing. I think the really bad performers, who were also a\rather unfortunate looking, are purposely mixed in as comic relief to break up the other numbers which were essentially strip show numbers. As for the lady boys themselves, some were really pretty, others closer to scary than sexy. One Marilyn Monroe number was especially nightmare worthy.