James Bond Island & Koh Panyee Village

Today we visited an island where some scenes from the 1974 James Bond movie The Man With the Golden Gun were shot. In fact, the island was the hideout of the villain. Today, the island is simply a photo stop, with some cheap souvenirs. We also made a stop at a fishing village built on stilts. At the time that these villagers first arrived, mostly descended from two Muslim families from Java, only natives of Thailand could own land in this country, so they built their village on stilts to stay close to where they were fishing. The Mosque remains the focal point of the village today, & was built on adjacent land when building on the island was allowed. There is a Muslim school on stilts too. Nowadays tourism makes up a large part of the island’s income, but only in the dry season. Longboats have to transport visitors, as at low tide, the area is cut off from boats that draw any more than about 2’ of water. It’s the same story here. As the fish stocks deplete, the villagers rely more on selling cheap souvenirs to survive. There is a restaurant, built on stilts, that attracts tourists at lunch time.Read more