The Andaman Sea
Good ol' Ao Nang. This is hang-out territory with some of the most beautiful beaches on the planet, gorgeous steep islands, great rock climbing for those with more vigour in this heat than I, and some really good pool tables and cheap beer. How long have I been here now? I think 15 days, but it doesn't seem like it. The need to return here seems to strike more than a few folk. A couple from my first dive trip had headed down to Malaysia and Sulawesi, only to be found back here in town when I arrived. Another fellow from that original dive trip headed off to Burma and Laos only to return to Ao Nang twice since I was last here. It seems that during times of hard travel the call of the memories of the easy, lovely life here becomes irresistible to many.
A few adventures to report, although
it's been mostly beach reading and idle snorkeling. I did muster up enough
steam for a day of
kayaking
about Hong Island up in the start of Phan Nga Bay.
I went with an outfit called Mr. Kayak whose motto is "safety clean nature".
Like all the other 5 million and 20 islands in the neighbourhood, Koh Hong
rises abruptly
from the water in great vertical limestone cliffs. It has
perfect white sand beaches, giving the surrounding waters that famously
perfect tropical aquamarine colour and offering lovely spots for munching
lunch, splashing about with the fishes, and watching unenlightened tourists
feeding the used-to-be-wild 4 foot
monitor lizards
.
The draw though is the
hong. Hong means room in Thai. The centre of the island is a lovely and
surprisingly large lagoon, accessible only through a single
narrow gap
between vertical walls. The bottom is all sand and apparently at low tide the lagoon
mostly drains and leaves behind a large land-surrounded beach. It was all
under 5 feet of water when we were in there, with a few delicate
trees
sticking straight out of the drink and some lovely stalagmites (or are the
stalactites) reaching towards the surface from overhanging cliffs and wannabe
mini-caves.
The great adventure though has been the
3 day/night dive trip with the good folk from Phra Nang divers. Day 1 was a
nostalgic revisit to the first site I dove here (or anywhere for that matter),
just past famous Koh Phi Phi Lay (Maya Bay), followed by a return to the
lovely Koh Ha group. The next two days were the point of this trip though.
There is a recently discovered dive site out in the middle of nowhere, marked
at the surface by only one small drying rock, from which you can see no other
land, called Hin Daeng and Hin Muang. While above the surface was wild and
bouncy enough to keep my stomach empty and breakfast an impossibility, below
the surface was truly rich beauty and delightfully complex topography.
Wall diving
is the game here - a favourite of mine.
And then the
Manta Ray
swims by! This is
their ground where they sweep majestically through the slightly cloudy waters
scooping plankton by the ton. The first one seen was a mere 3 meters in span.
It swept at great speed below and past us showing its great muscular dark back
with the white highlights at the wing tips and near the tail, then suddenly
arced up, towards the rock and reversed directions at a speed that I would
have thought impossible for such mass, to swim back above us showing it's
great white belly silhouetted against the surface light.
The next dive was better. I had my
underwater camera with me and at the ready as, out of the gloom, glided the
Granddaddy - a 5 meter span pushing tons of water with ease as it gracefully
pulsed it's massive wings. I got a few lovely photos of it passing when, as
soon as it had, another one came past the other way, this time barely above
me, perhaps a metre out of my reach; of which I have proof in the form of
un-enhanced close-up photos of the complex maw of the beast - the tubes by
which the aliens disgorge,
the ramps
by which they disembark.
But of course the physical abuse that is diving has again taken its toll on me. Before departing on the dive trip I had a horrible cold which barely cleared on the morning of departure. By the time the trip was done the cold had returned with a vengeance to throat, sinuses, lungs and ears. And, again, the cheap fins provided chewed my feet up such that I could only do 8 of the scheduled 11 dives. (I am nonetheless an official Advanced Open Water diver, though.) Now I'm holed up in Ao Nang trying to clear my head and mend my feet. And I have but only 8 days left in Thailand. If my cold clears soon, I'll go to Siboya for a few days of laziness and taste that unique corner of paradise. If not, I'll hang low here, enjoy the combination of CNN, the beaches and the curries, and - either way - make my way to Bangkok, and the waiting flight.
I dove with the Manta; I can come home now. Which is good timing - I'm ready to come home. I should like to hug my kids, hear my son play his fiddle, watch my daughter dance. But now, having sat upon the fore-deck of the dive ship, returning home with the warm tropical wind blowing through and the sea rushing under, with the great days diving in the waters of the beast behind me, reading Faulkner (master of the endless, epic sentence), wherever I go, whatever happens, I shall know - not from speculation or hearsay but from rich memory of experience - that while drudgery is demanding attention, while victories are won, failures experienced, bridges built, or burned, trains derailed, love found, or lost, while ice caps melt and dreams are made whole - somewhere in this world, just beneath the choppy surface of a warm sea under a pale blue tropical sky holding a hot patient sun, there soars the great Manta Ray, pulsing her graceful mass through miles and miles of open water, calling out, at a pitch far below the reach of our puny human ears, the coded melody from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (double basso profundo: 2nd, 3rd, tonic, down an octave, up a 5th) radiating forward through the vast ocean at the speed of sound through water (four times that of sound in air), barely keeping ahead of its great arcing, sweeping source - the mighty Ray that is the Manta.