Swimming with the Fishes - Tarutao Marine Park, Thailand
Tarutao Marine Park, Thailand
Tuesday February 24th, time for our first all-day snorking trip to the surrounding islands and coral reefs of Tarutao Marine Park. Candace and I had hired a private long-tail boat for a mere $60 for the whole boat for the whole day, including lunch (instead of $20 per person for a shared boat with 8 people crammed on it). Our captain was named Boo, and he spoke no English. But that's OK, we were in paradise and it didn’t really matter, nor did it matter that the wooden floorboards in his boat were coming lose and the engine seemed slightly tempestuous. We reached our first snorking site, hopped in the water, and were practically blown away by the colors, the clarity of the water, the incredible numbers and diversity of fish, the stunning coral. All day long we meandered between tiny island surrounding Koh Lipe, snorking and marveling at the marine life. And this time my underwater camera was NOT broken!!!
Around lunchtime we stopped at Koh Ra Wi’s idyllic white sand beach and rested under the mango trees. Boo distributed our lunches, individually packed in small bags – rice and vegetables with chili sauce. We walked around the island a bit and could not believe the pristine beauty of this place, the blues of the water and the greens of the untouched rainforest on these uninhabited islands. Of course there were other tourists visiting these same spots on other long-tail boats, but not so much to spoil the experience. We witnessed Chinese Water Torture Part II (see last year’s Thailand blog for Part I), this time the child was being forced to swim while wearing a bright orange life-vest, kicking, screaming, crying and flailing all the way.
After lunch we visited two more incredible areas for snorking. At Koh Adang there were a squillion tiny silver fish just below the surface, glinting in the sunlight like thousands of diamonds under the water. The parrot fish were rainbows flying through the water, dancing like mermaid ballerinas with their fire-orange colored lipstick and eye-liner, hungrily chomping the coral, making an almost 'kissing’ sound as they took delicate bites. There were dozens of bivalve species, neon blue and green and purple with sparkles and iridescent fairy tale colors that changed with the angle of the light shining through the aquamarine waters. A cute spotted box-fish peaked out from behind a rock, regarded us with momentary curiosity, and then ducked back into the shadows.
Our final stop was a small coral atoll in the middle of the open water with only a rope tied to a mooring buoy for us to hold on to in the strong current. We hopped in and were immersed in a world of microscopic plankton whose sting instantly set our skin on fire. We had to tightly clutch the mooring rope to avoid being swept away by the current, leading Boo to point out that we looked a bit like Superman (his only English word for the day). But we were completely surrounded by gorgeous fish feasting on said stingy microscopic plankton, and Boo showed us a superbly camouflaged rockfish that was so well disguised melted into the background.
Finally, the hotel, a dip in the pool, a hot shower, and we were off to find some dinner after a magnificent but tiring day at sea. We ended up at a Rastafarian bar with intriguing décor, jamming music and a bartender with an extremely interesting hairstyle who looked like had just stepped off a boat from Jamaica the previous day. We sipped some happy hour cocktails, intended to make our hour happier, and then meandered off a few hundred meters down the main drag to find some traditional Thai food for dinner. There is an endless selection of authentic Thai restaurants on Koh Lipe, so we eventually chose the least crowed one and settled in for some fantastic fare to squelch our hunger after a day in the salt, sun, and surf. Our server was of undetermined gender, a typical Thai ‘lady boy,’ although he/she could easily have been both a lady and a boy, or neither. It was very confusing. But we were literally starving, and so the food was good, and the gender of the wait-staff didn’t really matter at that point. After dinner we stumbled back to the hotel, ready to hit the sack after a long day at sea. Candace literally stumbled, as she went flying over the anchor rope from one of the long-tails and landed face-first in the sand, smashing a bottle of soda water she was carrying.
I would like to take this opportunity to inform the reader that sunscreen featured prominently during our full-day snorking trip. We slathered all exposed skin with SPF 50,000 before leaving the hotel and re-applied several times throughout the day. But as bed-time approached and as Candace and I donned our pajamas in preparation for a well-deserved night of sleep, we were suddenly and painfully aware that our backsides were emanating enough heat to light a BBQ. I took a quick peak in the mirror and screamed! How could this be!?!? My butt was unquestionably sunburned, as were the backs of my thighs and calves, right down to the point where the line of my snork-socks was painfully (literally and figuratively) evident! Thank goodness I was wearing a long-sleeve rashie shirt all day so my top-half remained unscathed. But Candace was not so fortunate. Her entire back-half from neck to ankles was fried and decidedly lobster-esque in color.
We slathered ourselves with aloe vera gel, and Candace took a giant swig of what was meant to be water from one of our water bottles in an attempt to swallow a few Advil to help with the sunburn pain. But no such luck – the liquid that was meant to be water was actually vodka (we forgot we had used one of our water bottles to hide a liter of vodka from the customs and immigration people). She nearly choked to death (a giant swig of unexpected vodka is not all that tasty, apparently) and ran into the bathroom sputtering and spewing vodka everywhere. At least she managed to swallow some of the Advil before we both passed out in a Thai-food and sun-drenched stupor.
The next morning we both lay in bed moaning in pain, nursing our hot bottoms with cold towels. What have we done?!?!? Despite more layers of sunscreen than layers of fluffy pastry in baklava, we were still burnt to a crisp. Ouch. Meanwhile, we were also quite hungry so we applied more aloe vera, then somehow managed to apply clothing over our searing, sticky skin and headed off to breakfast. While enjoying fresh mango and yoghurt at our beachfront table, we watched crazy Europeans baking themselves in the sun while lying on the hot white sand. Some of them were so dark it was as if they had been baked in an oven and come out categorically ‘over-done.’
We decided to soothe our painful asses by submersing them in refreshing sea water, and headed out for a day of kayaking. It turned out to be a boatload of fun! What better way to forget ones’ pains and sorrows than to kayak and snork? We walked over to "sunrise beach" on the eastern side of Koh Lipe and rented a tandem kayak. The water was so incredibly turquoise it seemed unreal, as did the ridiculously inexpensive 200 Baht kayak rental fee. We paddled out to a small island about 1km offshore, pulled our kayak onto the sandy beach, and enjoyed a lovely packed lunch of hard-boiled eggs and granola bars. Except one of the eggs wasn’t exactly hard-boiled and leaked white gooey eggy liquid all over the place. Egg-cellent! OK, so we enjoyed one hard-boiled egg and a granola bar. After snorking for about an hour through beautiful coral reefs around the island with about a bazillion fish swimming around us, we jumped back in the kayak and paddled to shore. As we were paddling, literally thousands of small silver fish started leaping out of the water, jumping in an arc across the front of our kayak and all around us. There must have been a formidable predator chasing them in the water! It was an incredible sight, so many fish creating a rainbow of silver glitter across the water’s surface.
It was time for Shane to arrive. I took a quick shower to dislodge the salt and sand from my teeth (and other nebulous places) while Candace headed down to “immigration” to collect Shane. Friday the 27th of February we took our second all-day snorking trip to the Tarutao Marine Park, this time with Shane. We were traveling with the same company but had a different long-tail boat and captain from our previous trip. When he picked us up at the beachfront and we loaded into the boat, I asked him his name. His reply was something incomprehensible (to me, at least) that sounded like “dead” or “deed” or “diva,” so I chose to just call him Dave. He seemed happy with that. So Dave led us out to the far islands, Koh Ra Ba and Koh Batong and Koh Palai. It was a pretty windy morning and as a result the surf was quite choppy, so I spent about an hour being pounded in the face with spray and waves while everything we had brought along was steadily and assuredly being soaked Good thing we had brought along a dry bag and a waterproof camera!
We were about half-way to our first snorking site when Dave suddenly yelled out, turned the boat on a dime, and started emphatically pointing at the water. What?! What?! We scanned the horizon to no avail, all we saw was choppy water and idyllic forested islands dotting the horizon. But then, suddenly, there they were! Dolphins! They were jumping and leaping in the wake of the boat, playing in the waves. Dave circled around again and we saw them leap and splash a few more times, and then they were gone as quickly as they had appeared.
Our first snork spot was better than anything we had seen yet. As we jumped off the boat we literally felt like we had just landed in a giant Las Vegas marine aquarium; the place was teeming with colors and fish and coral and bivalves and anemones and various other incredible things. It was truly spectacular! The current was strong, but we managed to stay there for about an hour and the diversity of things we saw was amazing. Then we headed to another incredible spot, and another, and another. Everywhere the coral looked different – sometimes it looked like poppadums, sometimes like potato chips, sometimes like layers of oyster mushrooms, sometimes like tree branches, sometimes like delicate fans. We stopped at one site that seemed to be in the middle of the open ocean, but as soon as we dived into the water we were confronted with a series of magnificent underwater pinnacles crawling with colors and teeming with marine life. We saw a Pacific Lionfish, one of the craziest looking fish on the planet with dozens of long, spikey, striped ‘fins.’ Dave the long-tail boat captain pointed it out, expertly camouflaged amongst the spiny sea urchins. Dave told us tales of learning to free dive while snorkeling, down to almost 70 meters. We were impressed with his ability to hold his breath for what seemed like forever, and his talent for finding amazing fish hidden in the reef.
Our final stop of the day was Monkey Beach, aptly named because there were indeed many Rhesus macaques (a species of monkey) hanging out on the beach. Even though there was a clear warning sign stating “do not feet the monkey, they can be wild to you!” every boat that landed on the island was full of tourists feeting (feeding) the monkeys. And as a result, the monkeys were out of control and really aggressive. One of them jumped on our boat and threatened to wrestle a container of pineapple right out of my hand. I threw the container out of sight and Dave chased the monkey off the boat. Right next to us a boatload of French tourists were taunting the monkeys with watermelon and other fruit; the monkeys jumped onto their boat with threatening shrieks and sent one of the tourists flying over backwards, landing on his back in the water with a giant splash. Yikes!
After a magnificent day of swimming with the fishes we had cracked, salty lips permanently formed into the shape of a snorkel mouth-piece. We loaded up our gear and headed back to Koh Lipe. The trip home was much more pleasant as the wind had subsided and the surf was much calmer. I covered myself from head to toe in my sarong (to avoid further sunburn) and lay down to enjoy the trip back. After showering and dislodging thousands of tiny grains of sand from every hidden crevice of my body and scrubbing my salty, sunburned lips, I was too tired to join Candace and Shane for a dinner out on the town. Instead, I stayed behind at the hotel, soaked my sunburn in the cool water of the pool right off our patio, and heated up my leftover pasta for dinner. Since our room came equipped with a fridge but no microwave, I heated it up by boiling hot water in the tea kettle and then floating my Tupperware of pasta in the sink filled with hot water. Ingenious! Who needs a microwave? Good thing we had brought our own mini kitchen and all its accouterments!
The next day, Saturday the 28th of February, we all headed out on a diving trip as we seemingly just couldn’t get enough of the salt, sand, sun, seawater, and marine life. Our first stop was a lovely spot on the rocky shoreline of one of the many beautiful limestone karst islands jutting out of the cerulean blue waters. Oh my goodness, the fish were amazing! Everywhere we went on this trip seemed more magnificent than the last place, more fish, more colors, and more ooh la la of the ocean! Shane did some diving and Candace and I snorked on the surface, seeing all kinds of interesting things – a cluster of squid, a school of Moorish idols, a moray eel, a giant fish the size of a microwave oven. I also saw a stripy sea snake, which I promptly swam after with great vigor in order to take photos and even make a video! Later, when I was identifying the marine life photos with a “Guide to Fishes of Southeast Asia” book, I discovered that the stripy sea snake was actually a banded sea krait, one of the 10 most deadly snakes in the world. Wonderful! Thankfully they are also supposed to be quite shy and reserved, rarely attacking humans, even when provoked. Whew!
We then headed across the western side of Koh Lipe to a submerged coral island dubbed Stonehenge, reputed to be amongst the most amazing dive sites in the world. We glided through incredibly clear turquoise waters and enjoyed a lovely lunch before arriving in what seemed to be the middle of the open ocean. Candace and I jumped in and were immediately immersed (literally and figuratively) in a world of incredible color and vibrant life. The fans of coral leaves waving in the wind were pink and purple and the deep red color of fresh blood. And the fish! They were everywhere! We saw a giant batfish, a titan triggerfish, heaps of Nemo fish (clown anemone fish), parrotfish, pufferfish, angelfish, and the ever elusive powder blue surgeonfish (also known as the Dory fish). The powder blue surgeonfish was so beautiful (and my favorite color!), but very wary of snorkelers and divers and swift to swim away as soon as it was spotted, thus making photography challenging and an event somewhat akin to a high speed underwater police chase.
After another lovely day of exploring the underwater treasures that the tropical Andaman Sea around Koh Lipe had to offer, we returned to the hotel to shower and attempted to wash the now firmly imbedded layer of salt off our skin (we each showered individually, just in case the way I have written this story implies otherwise). We finished off the day by walking back across the island to Sunset Beach, where we passed the ‘Porn Resort,’ probably a very interesting place to stay. We sat on the sand and watched an absolutely stunning sunset, as if it has been arranged as a perfect way to end an incredible day. There was a collection of cute stray dogs on the beach, and we ended up feeding one of them some of the spring rolls we brought from our hotel as sundowner snacks.
We then headed out to dinner at an incredible Italian restaurant called La Luna that had tastier and more authentic Italian food than I have had in a long time, a bit of a surprise on a tiny island off the coast of Thailand. Our final stop of the evening was the Tattoo Car, where Shane conversed with two local tattoo artists about Koi Dragons swimming in seas of orange and yellow while Candace and I sipped gin and tonics and tried desperately to stay awake after a long day of outdoor adventure. And somehow in the midst of the tattoo discussion frenzy, my water bottle was left behind at the bar, never to be seen again. We walked along the beach to the hotel and Candace tripped over a few more long-tail boat ropes, but this time she didn’t fall down. When we finally returned to our hotel room I forced her to write a few postcards (Candace has an extensive collection of postcards from all over SE Asia that have been purchased and addressed, and even stamped, but never written or sent) before we all passed out.
It was our final day in Koh Lipe, and we headed out to have a nice breakfast at a local place alleged to be quite excellent by Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor, the aptly named Café Lipe. We ordered a coffee and stood around wondering why this place was supposedly so great – the menu was limited to three items, the décor was shocking, and the same ambiguous gender man/woman who has been our server at the Thai restaurant a few nights before was standing behind the counter looking bored. We were quite confused, thoroughly unimpressed, and the coffee wasn’t that good. Instead of ordering breakfast we decided to walk back down the beach to our hotel and eat (a free breakfast) there. Along the way we saw a charming little place tucked away behind the palm trees with a few tables dotting the veranda and a lovely view of the sea – Café de Lipe. Aha! This must be the place. And indeed, it was incredible, the food was yummy, the ambiance was relaxing and secluded, the service was excellent, and the Germans eating breakfast and smoking weed at the table next to us were quite entertaining to say the least. Yes, a small different in name, a big difference in quality and experience!
Candace and Shane decided to spend our final day lounging by the pool and gazing at the beautiful clear blue waters of the ocean. I joined them for part of the day, but my ability to ‘do nothing’ and relax is quite limited. Soon I was snorking in the waters just off the shore in front of our hotel, where I also saw an incredible assortment of fish and beautiful coral. Then it was back to lounging by the pool and sipping a mai tai. Shane spent the *entire* day in the shade under a sun umbrella, covered in SPF 50-squillion sunscreen. But somehow, despite not being in the direct sun and being covered in sun repellant, by the end of the day he was completely scorched. Burned doesn’t even begin to describe his condition – it was like someone had thrown him into boiling water. Yikes! I guess that whole ‘reflection off the water’ thing is true. Plus the sun umbrella may not have been completely sun-proof. Either way, Shane was torched and sadly feeling quite miserable at the end of our holiday in paradise.
The morning of March 2nd it was time to reverse the arduous journey and return to Penang. The first step was walking down the beach to the same shack/hut where we had passed through Thai immigration, and organize our passports and paperwork for exigration. Again or passports were confiscated and we were told we would retrieve them upon our arrival in Malaysia. As un-kosher as this sounded, we had no choice but to agree, once again. I am sure there are at least six Thai nationals who now have a counterfeit American passport and travel under the names of Gabriella Flacke, Candace Cavilee, and Shane Cavilee. Anyway, we took the motorbike tuk-tuk taxi from the hotel back to the long-tail boat boarding place, dragged our heavy suitcases back through the sand, and clambered onto the long-tail boats in the oppressive mid-morning sun with wet legs/pants. An infamous quote from Shane as a result of this situation – “skinny people don’t get fat like us hot people do!”
A short 1.5 hour ferry ride to Langkawi and we were back in Malaysia. In the mad rush to disembark the ferry boat I ended up falling over a small ledge and landing on my face on the gang plank leading up to the dock, my suitcase landing on top of me! Candace was right behind me and immediately stopped to help, except as she leaned over to help me back up she whacked me in the head (twice!) with her backpack and knocked me back down! Meanwhile the traffic of anxious tourists disembarking the boat were quite annoyed that they couldn’t progress beyond the point where I was lying helplessly on the ground and started to walk around/over me. Finally I managed to get up and move out of the way, pass through Malaysian immigration, and emerge unharmed on the other side, back in the melee of the chaotic Langkawi ferry terminal that seemed completely unchanged since our departure seven days earlier.
We had several hours to kill before our flight back to Penang, so we decided to take a trip to the world’s steepest and longest single-cable sky car. The sky car whisks you up to 708 meters above sea level in a mere 12 minutes over a remarkable distance of 2.2km, pretty much straight up-hill. After the obligatory taxi fare negotiations we hopped into a local cab and sped across the island to the far western point. The taxi driver was interested in why Shane was traveling with two women, and immediately assumed we were both his wives. By now I was hardly phased, as this was not the first time I had been assumed to be married to a random man during my international escapades, and Shane was definitely not a bad guy as far as fake husbands go. We arrived at the Las Vegas-style sky car village and waded our way through the hordes of ogling tourists and kitschy souvenir shops to board our tram car. Suddenly we started zipping up, up and away, flying over the pristine jungles of Langkawi, rainforest and waterfalls many hundreds of meters below us, suspended by a bar on a single wire cable. We were sharing the sky car with a local Malaysian couple, and the poor woman looked like she was going to lose her lunch. Candace and Shane were not that excited either. But I had ridden exactly the same type of contraption many times in the Swiss Alps, and was not fazed. Of greater importance, this entire system was manufactured by the Swiss, so what could possibly go wrong? Shane quickly pointed out that although it was manufactured by the Swiss, it was assembled by the Malaysians, so the potential for disaster was eminent. Nevertheless, we made it to the top unscathed, and enjoyed breath-taking 360-degree views of Langkawi and the stunning turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea dotted with hundreds of tiny green islands as far as the eye could see.
While marveling at the fact that we could actually see all the way to Koh Lipe, we met a local family at the top who desperately wanted us to star in their family portrait. I am still not entirely sure why these people wanted to have some random Americans in their picture, but they were very keen. We exchanged a few pleasantries about the view, the stunning weather, and the Malaysian government, and moved on. Suddenly we were crunched for time so quickly boarded the sky car for the seemingly even more rapid and steep descent to the starting point. We loaded up into a taxi and sped through the winding jungle roads back to the airport, arriving in plenty of time to check our luggage and cram onto our Air Asia flight back to Penang (Air Asia’s seats are so close together that only someone less than 4 feet tall would have adequate leg-room). Another thus another magnificent holiday came to an end.