For 3 days, I was able to explore Phang Nga Bay by kayak. The water here is as clear as aquamarine crystal and the beaches are unbelievably inviting. So inviting that I camped out on the serene beaches in order to maximize my ability to soak up all the fantastic scenery and explore the numerous sea caves, hidden lagoons and extraordinary limestone cliffs. There's nothing like a secluded tropical beach. This also affords me plenty of time to go snorkeling (ha! yeah right!) and swimming (until I spot the fish!). Oh and they also let me drive the boat. Don't worry, I may not know my port from starboard sides but I do actually have a boating license in the state of CT!
There is so much beauty here between the islands, the sea caves, and the hongs, it is hard to portray by photograph. These natural wonders are captivating and it's incredible how these hongs came to exist.
Phang Nga Bay is located between Phuket and Krabi and is home to some of the largest coral reef in the world stretching from the Malaysia boarder to north of Vietnam. The coral grew and died forming a deposit of calcium carbonate hundredes of meters thick. This formed the basis of the limestone- the main rock in the islands. About 75million years ago, the limstone was pushed upwards from the sea bed by the pressure of the movement of the plates (kinda like making mountains). The islands today have been shaped by wind, rain, wave and current. When you look at the rocks, the red color is due to the iron (or rust), the white is calcium and the black is the natural aging process. Where the colors are brightest is where it is more recent and with time the rock fades to black. Pure limestone is snow-white and other colors are caused by other rocks.
The limestone caves and hongs within Phang Nga Bay are made from "karst" formations (Karst means internal drainage). Most of the areas that have karst formations also have heavy rainfall and thick bed of limestone with lots of flowing water underground. Acid dissolves the mineral in the limestone and when the rain combines with the soil, it becomes more acidic. Water sets in pools on top of the islands and percolates down through the cracks in the rocks. The acid exacerbates the dissolving limestone and enlarges the cracks. The sides of the sink hole continue to erode and dissolve. If a sea cave happens to connect with this hole, the enlarging process is sped up by the action of the sea water.
How's that for a little geography refresher?
Back to my journey... I met up with a guide- Tom from Sea Canoe, and his crew, along with 5 other tourists. We departed from the northeast side of Phuket on a small blue boat that will be my support vehicle for the next few days. We travel for 2 hours between Ko Yao Noi and Ko Yao Yai (Pearl: Ko= island) to a beautiful patch of ocean just off the coast of Krabi where we stopped to snorkel and swim for a bit. We then took a boat ride over to an area of caves where we paddled through a cave, into a hong at low tide so we could actually stand up in the middle of the lagoon. We saw a few monkeys off to the side- my favorite part.
After several hours of paddling, we were boated to Ko Nok, a very small island with a small patch of beach we would call home for the evening. We have dinner on the boat and by the time we are ready to set up camp, it's pitch dark outside! Our guides have done this a million times so they don't even bat an eye, but I'm a little nervous about being shark bait in these dark waters and floating to an island that I can no longer see with a solid current pulling me out to who knows where. I trust my guide and he paddles me and another girl into the beach with no problem whatsoever and the only light source was my headlamp. We set up camp for the night and I didn't sleep a wink. But it was beautiful.
In the morning, I felt like a refugee getting rescued on a life raft as my guide paddled the 2 of us back to the support boat on our blow up canoe. The boat takes us to another kayaking spot for the day, and thankfully I don't get sea sick! Two people on the boat (including 1 new staff guy) have gotten pale and sick from the huge chop in the sea. Not gonna lie, I'm beginning to feel like I'm on Deadliest Catch (except for the whole freezing water thing). But we are flying up and down over huge waves and rocking side to side. The soda bottles are sliding back and forth across the wet deck. Good times. We finally reach our kayaking spot and enter a hong. I don't think I actually described a hong before, but a hong is formed when the tidal sea cave meets up with the karst formation. The tidal action pounds the water through the cave increasing the erosion process and continues untill the cliffs become cylindrical. Basically, it's like a giant limestone donut. We enter the donut hole. Inside the tide is low enough we can see hundreds of star fish on the sea floor. My guide picked one up for me to hold. It was so neat! I've only ever held the dead ones you buy on the beach in tourist gift shops.
The next hong we enter is filled with a gorgeous winding trail of mangroves.
Mangroves are like a sea forest. They have a water-born seed that takes root in still/serene salt water (like the hongs). The roots grow like stilts to hold the flower/leaves above water. We slowly paddle through the mangroves so we see them come to life with lizards, birds, crabs and macaque monkeys! As soon as we make any noise the monkeys scatter so we float in silence, only paddling every once in a while. We watched a group of 10-12 monkeys play, jump branches, talk to each other and even poop in the water. The macaques are crab-eating monkeys so hanging out in the mangroves is a good place for them to find food (and me to watch them at work). In the afternoon, we head back west aross Phang Nga Bay to Oyster Hong. We navigate through some sea caves and do some bird watching- hornbills and king fishers.
My guides and I in the mangroves at low tide.
We are hanging out in the hong when we notice that the tide is rising rather quickly and the sandbar we're standing on is increasingly filling with water and our feet are suddenly covered. I get nervous. We have to get out before we're trapped!!! Obviously our guide thinks it's funny that I'm nervous, and he keeps us in there a little longer. When we paddle out, we have to lay flat on our backs and push the cave roof with our hands (it was about 5 feet above our heads when we entered). Tom was smiling cause he wanted us to have this experience of a lifetime. Very incredible to see the change both within the lagoon and within the sea cave itself when the tide begins to rise. It's like 2 totally different worlds. Tom is incredibly talented when it comes to reading the tides and charting out where we can/cannot go depending on the chop, wind, current, etc. When we look back at our sea cave entrance/exit from the boat, it's already closed off. Yikes!
We paddle through many more mangroves, hongs and around islands over these 3 days but one of the most terrifying moments of my life happened on our last night. After dinner, Tom tells us we're doing a night paddle. Our boat takes us to a new spot for where we'll enter the cave only our boat doesn't have lights OR a navigational system!!!!!! Anyone else nervous about this? These guys are just crazy. Two guides grab flashlights and stand at the front of the boat and the rest of us are on the back with our headlamps pointing towards the rocks. The captain slowly steers us towards this special cave for our paddle. I'm terrified..... of the night boating, the night paddling, sharks, getting stuck in the hong, pretty much everything. I was certainly not prepared for what was ahead.
We leave the boat with nothing but a headlamp. There are 2 of us in the boat and our guide is doing the paddling. The other girl and I are instructed to lay flat on our backs. The roof of the cave is about 4" from my nose! I'm not sure how my guide is navigating this tiny passageway, but it's working. We reach a small opening where we can sit halfway up and see a bunch of shiny crystal rock in a flowing stalagtite (like a frozen diamond waterfall). We lay back down and get through the last few twists and turns of the sea cave and eerge into the lagoon. It's beautiful to look around in the dark and then up to the sky where the stars are shining so bright. We turn off our headlamps and it's complete darkness. My guide starts smashing and swirling the paddle in the water and suddenly there are zaps of neon lights in the water!!! The plankton glow in the dark when they are stirred because they release energy (I don't know much more about how this works so you'll have to look that one up yourselves). I was so proud of myself for not freaking out. I even got on the sandbar and started swishing my feet around to light up the plankton. We hopped back in the canoe for one last sea cave in darkness. And it all goes downhill from here....
Anyone who knows me well, knows I have an unexplanable, unrelenting phobia of fish. Not fear, PHOBIA. It's different. Look it up. I know it's ridiculous and weird and annoying but I cannot overcome this. It's not like being scared of a spider. I thought I was all brave with the glowing plankton but about 2 seconds into the lagoon, there were jumping fish everywhere. JUMPING FISH! My worst nightmare. It doesn't take long until these fish can sense my fear and in the most unlikely odds, a fish actually gets high enough to not only get in our canoe, but LAND ON MY SHOULDER!!! AHHHHHHH. My guide and Leslie were both laughing because I jumped so high I was literally standing up on the canoe. Good thing I have some serious balance skills. I screamed so loud I probably woke up and scared off every bit of wildlife in the hong. My guide thinks this is funny so he reaches out and catches another one in his hands to show me (I think he was trying to show me it's small and won't hurt me, but between his 2 words of English and my 2 words of Thai, my phobia is lost in translation). I became so paralyzed with fear I was trembling. I couldn't breathe, I literally couldn't move and I was sitting stifly upright as still as a statue. It was taking all of my being to hold back my tears which had already starting their decent down my cheeks. I was not laughing. I had already warned Leslie of my issue and until this moment, she (like everyone else) didn't really understand. She caught on quickly to the fact that this was not your average fear and she started yelling at my guide to stop messing around. At this point he was tapping his hands in the water to mimic the jumping fish sound while we were all sitting in the lagoon in silence. I'm sure this moment of silence and darkness was peaceful and beautifulto most normal human beings, but it was my worst nightmare. I couldn't hold back the tears and they just started streaming silently down my face. This is my hell. When the nightmare was finally over and we turned our headlamps on for the paddle back out, I wiped my face and pulled it together before anyone could see how ridiculous I was. So pathetic. We got back to the boat and I was still shaking uncontrollably. Thankfully, the beach we camped on this night drove right up on the sandy shore so we just hopped off the boat and onto the beach. I don't think I would have made it back in the water that evening.
The next morning, I wake up to a macaque monkey pooping on my tent! The little sucker was up in a tree right overhead and aiming straight for us. Guess he was marking his turf! I swear I saw him laughing at us. We packed up camp and suddenly there are about 11 monkeys watching us. The 3 babies make their way even closer to us, about 10 feet away while momma monkey stood guard a few feet behind. I could watch these monkeys for days! Our last kayaking spot is through the Bat Cave. Bet you can guess what we're gonna find in here. This cave is much more spacious with 10-20' ceilings willed with sleeping bats. The smell is awful but it's kind of a pretty sight. A few bats fly aroundhere and there, but overall they leave us alone. When we get to the lagoon we are greeted by a monkey sitting on a rock ledge. He comes closer and closer and when we turn the corner, there are about 2 dozen macaque monkeys! They're playing, grooming, babies cuddling with mom, and the elder perched high up making sure we are all right. I think they think our bright yellow canoe is a banana. We paddle around in silence, observing the macaques do their thing.
We happen to find a huge jelly fish in the lagoon. He'll die soon because the tide was going down and there's no way for him to get out now. Maybe the monkeys will eat it. It's eery how similar they are with their movements, grooming, observation and mimicking. And I'm pretty sure I learned a few things watching a little one rock climb up a pretty steep 5.11 face. I'm pretty sure I took about 100 pictures and 10 videos in there.
But our kayaking expedition is coming to an end so we sail from Ko Nok Khum to Ko Nakha Yai for some swimming before docking back on Phuket. Except for the whole jumping fish incident, this trip was phenomenal. These islands are so beautiful and breathtaking. I'm very fortunate I can say I camped on those beaches and kayaked some uninhabited caves.
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Tracy! this is amazing!! I am sure you're having so much fun!
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