Snorkelling the Four Islands

This morning’s sunrise was even more spectacular than yesterday’s. Long before official sunrise, the sky was suffused with orange light in anticipation of the dawn.

As the Earth tilted us towards the shining star, the sky’s hue shifted towards light blue and the orange colour coalesced above a peak on the mainland visible on the horizon, before the bright flat disc at last became visible.

We had ahead of us a day of island hopping and snorkelling. I prepared us a substantial breakfast of rice and omelette – khao khai jiao (ข้าวไข่เจียว) – with a twist of using red rice and added bean sprouts.

The tour was run, and in this case guided, by our host in Ko Lanta. At the pier, we met her and the three other people who would share the long-tailed boat, which was captained by our next-door neighbour. It’s a small community in Old Town.

Our host had brought sweet Thai breakfast snacks – cassava cakes, fried bananas and waffles – which we picked at as the boat roared off. Setting out in a south-easterly direction, our target was a group of four small islands lying across the channel close to Trang province on the mainland of Thailand.

The long-tailed boat – ruea hang yao (หางยาว) – uses a normal car engine that is suspended at the back of the boat and directly drives a propeller at the end of a long metal pole. The engine, which is not housed for noise reduction, creates quite a din, so we struggled to hear one another as we sped along. Opting for companionable silence, we all sat at the prow of the boat, enjoying the taste of the salty spray on our lips.

The horizon was dotted with the outlines of various islands that make up the archipelago. After about an hour’s drive, the flat shapes in the distance resolved themselves into towering three-dimensional craggy outcrops, whose tops were covered in trees and, in some cases, bats.

Bats at Ko Ma

We weighed anchor first at Ko Ma, which is a tiny outcrop rising from the sea, inhabited only by the nocturnal creatures. Although asleep upside-down, our captain told us that they “look hungry”. Here we donned snorkels and, in the shadow of the rocky giant, leapt overboard into the warm Andaman Sea. After some getting used to breathing through our mouths, we realised that we were on top of corals and in the middle of a shoal of fish. The brightly coloured fish darted about but largely seemed unbothered that we had joined their aquatic group. Swimming about the rocks, we saw the kinds of fish that one normally associates with an aquarium. Bright purple anemones, yellow stripy fish, rainbow fish, and a kind of fish whose scales danced neon colours at it flapped its fins – we nicknamed this one ‘disco fish’. It was an incredible sight.

Entrance to Emerald Cave at Ko Mook

Moving on to Ko Mook (or Muk), home of the so-called Emerald Cave (Tham Morakot), we were told to expect crowds and, possibly, the local rangers. Since the coup, policing the national park and collecting the fee has been taken over by the military. The entrance to the cave is too small to sail the boat into, so we hopped off and swam through the small opening. Our guide brought a torch, without which there would be no way of seeing our path through, as the tunnel was long enough that no light from either end reached the middle. We emerged into a beautiful oasis out in the middle of the island, a hollow surrounded on all sides by tall walls of rock. This formation is known in Thai as a hong (ห้อง), which means ‘room’ or ‘chamber’, and was apparently used by pirates to stash their treasure. There are around fifty of such hong in the area, many of which were discovered by aerial surveillance.

Fortunately, we had timed our arrival at the cave well, as the inner sanctum was peaceful, save for a few tourists who appeared to have smuggled in their cigarettes in dry bags and were enjoying a quick drag. Exiting via the same dark passageway, we passed a conga line of domestic Thai tourists, all attached to a rope. Astonishingly, our guide told us that many Thais don’t know how to swim and so need life-vests and rope to get into the cave.

Back on the boat, we made a brief stop at nearby Ko Chueak for some more impressive snorkelling. After this, it was time for lunch in paradise…

On the south cost of Ko Ngai is a largely unpopulated beach. There was once a resort here called Paradise, which incredibly seems to have closed its doors. We pulled up on the stretch of white sand and lay out the picnic. The view out over the clear water was unparalleled.

Our host had thoughtfully packed a tiffin with vegetable green curry – Thai spicy, as we like it – and papaya salad. Other non-vegetarian dishes were chicken massaman curry and chicken laab (or larb), which I will attempt to make for us at a later date. Eating from a tin plate that wouldn’t look out of place in a mess hall, it couldn’t have been a finer meal in the setting.

We snorkelled about in the shallow waters and then moved out to slightly deeper water where the coral and fish were abundant. Sadly, this was our last dip before we had to wend our way home. The afternoon winds had picked up and the calm water of this morning would soon turn choppy.

The benefit of living in a house suspended over the water is that the boat can dock right at your door. Rather than docking at the pier, the captain piloted the long-tail in between our house and his. We alighted and collapsed inside.

After out adventure, we dined lightly on some fresh spring rolls filled with rice vermicelli, bean sprouts, cucumber and cashew nuts. A slightly spicy peanut dip made this less bland than it could have been.