Thursday 23rd Feb
It was hard to believe we were anchored when I woke up this morning – it had been such a calm, still night there was no movement at all on the boat. I was up at 6 30, in the cockpit with the binoculars watching the bats soaring above the peaks of the Hong in the early morning light. When Paul got up around 7 30 he said it was time to get going – this happened to coincide with our neighbours on the catamarans doing a jolly morning workout routine: facing each other from the decks of their boats, they sang and chanted whilst dancing and exercising and cheering each other on. We weighed anchor and moved on.
For most of the morning, the autohelm and I took on the steering and watching while Paul tried to get a signal to send his work reports.
We were heading for a small Muslim fishing village called Panyi which has quite a fascinating history. Two families from Java, Indonesia set out at the end of the 18th century to seek a suitable place to settle and make a living from fishing. It was agreed that whoever found such a spot first would raise a flag to alert the others, which is how the village came to be called Panyi (panyi means flag). All the families living there today are said to be descended from those original settlers. We had read up about it and looked at images online. It looked an incredible place – a village built on tall wooden stilts at the foot of a limestone cliff and boasts a market, souvenir shops, seafood restaurants and a notable mosque. As we got nearer to it a longtail boat followed us from behind until it was close enough for the guy at the helm to gesture that he would show us where to anchor. We weren’t sure if we had a choice or not, and he led us to somewhere different from where we’d intended to drop it, but there were fishing buoys around and he may have been keen for us to avoid nets so we stopped where he’d indicated. The area was full of other longtails and motorboats carrying visitors to and from the piers of the village. It’s a popular destination to visit for lunch in the seafood restaurants or an afternoon of browsing the stalls. After we had anchored the guy in the longtail drew alongside to tell us he would take us ashore and guide us around the village (for a fee, naturally). He didn’t really want to take no for an answer until I made the universal sign for sleep and even then he said he’d come back later.
We wanted to wait until all the day visitors had departed anyway. He returned as promised at 4 o’clock just as were getting ready to go across. He got the message when he saw the dinghy but we thanked him for the offer and had a friendly chat with him about the village.
It was short hop across to the visitors’ jetty and some small boys came running up, eager to help Paul tie it up. I was struck by how flimsy the structure seemed as we walked off the pier and into the ‘streets’. The stilts are wooden and are sunk into thick, smelly mud teeming with all kinds of wriggling creatures. I couldn’t help thinking how awful it would be to topple in; the walkways are fairly narrow, often with no barriers on the sides.
Luckily there was no risk of being jostled because all the day visitors had gone and we seemed to be the only visitors there. This fact made me feel slightly awkward because it felt like we were gawping at people’s houses at times, especially as you could see right inside to their living area while walking by. The central part of Koh Panyi is a concrete floor that connects to a row of tiny souvenir shops, and from there a narrow maze of uneven planks leads to the villagers’ wooden homes. It would be easy to become disorientated in the network of walkways and small shops, all of which sell gifts such as tee shirts, batiks and handmade items made of shells and coconut shells.
Away from the centre, the space opens up between the wooden houses and you can see the seafront where all the restaurants are…but the smell lingers. We ambled around the souvenir stalls, had a look at the grand and gleaming mosque but were unable to go inside because only Muslims can enter it, and then on to the floating football pitch, built out of bits of wood and fishing rafts by local children back in 1986. Football is popular here despite the confined space, and we saw a group of boys playing it underneath the cliff. We had intended to eat here but we weren’t hungry enough and as it looked as if it was about to bucket down with rain, Paul was keen to get back to Sister Midnight in case the anchor dragged. The dinghy trip back was a wet one: the heavy shower and a strong wind started just as we were getting in it, and we felt quite cold by the time we reached the boat (feeling chilled really is a novelty here). The anchor had held well despite the strength of the squall – we hadn’t moved an inch. Some more pics below of Koh Panyi Village.
