Cruisin' With A Bruisin'

Row row row your boat

Gently round the bay

Wack the tourist in the back

And sniffle all the way

We were tendered over to a floating platform surrounded by "fake" floating houses.  They were just put there for the tourists, the real houses are on the other side of the mountain.

We stood and watched people load onto these little wooden boats maned by very slight men and women brandishing straight oars that look like they would just cut through water without moving the boat, but they had a style not unlike the Venetian gondoliers and moved smoothly and swiftly.  We didn't break any speed records, but that made the journey all the more pleasant.......

Until we heard the first sniff!  We felt a bit bad for her having to row us around, but when she wacked Jenny and Chris in the back with the oar handles, we lost our sympathy as quickly as she lost her humour.  She sniffed, sneezed and snorted the whole time and we had to duck and dive and then down some heavy duty immune defence to avoid catching what ever it was.

But that didn't detract from the absolutely stunning scenery that loomed around us.  Breathtaking is the only word I can think of to describe it.

There weren't as many floating houses as we thought there might be and wondered if there was perhaps different areas in the massive labyrinth of mountains in the bay.

Some people chose to kayak which looked like it would have been oarsome (see what I did there?) fun, but we chose to keep our arses dry and use our hands for taking photos rather than rowing.  

The little houses were very simple and tidy and minimally furnished because whenever a typhoon flies through it wipes everything away and they have to start again.  It was also a little eery that there were no people there. 

This was a little opening in the rock to get out of the bay we were in.  The kayakers could paddle under it, but the boats took a sharp turn to the right. 

And as with all good tours, we were to exit through the gift shop.  In this case, it was a pearl farm.  

We were given a talk by a man in a suit jacket, that went nicely with his fishing pants.  He spoke what might have been very good English, but in his extremely strong accent, sounded a little like Klingon.  He showed us how they plant and extract pearls from the oysters shells..... but we know Pia Boschetti from Latitude Pearls/Gallery (look her up, she's got lovely things), we already knew the process so luckily we could back away from the indecipherable lecture and pursue the pearl shop.

On the way home, I took this photo of the lovely Marie. She's such a lovely lady!

Enjoy.