South Thailand,
2- Gulf of Phang Nga
To the south and north of the gulf, trodden islands, groomed for the feet of the whole world
Bang Rong Pier,
the pier
The starting point for speed boat trips to Phang Nga Gulf is Bang Rong Pier (the pier of the Bang Rong River).
We are on the developed part of the estuary of this short, slightly winding river which closes in a funnel upstream under the thick mangrove swamp with inextricable shores.
After leaving the main road at a crossroads where stands a white and green mosque, from the road that leads us there we can see a few stranded boats, longtail boats, which appear to be wrecks but are not ; only boats waiting for the tide, as though hidden in the middle of the mangroves. TO unlike those taken by tourists, colorful and embellished, these fishing boats are made of unpainted wood.
We then reach with our little one van, of which the Toyota brand is very widespread, a sort of large catch-all parking lot where vehicles for tourists and those of the Thai people congregate, get tangled up in merry mess, maneuver to the nearest centimeter, squeeze to enter and exit on the already hot asphalt in the morning.
She also prepares some local dishes for the Thai crews who will drive the speed boats and the drivers leaving, often sitting on a bench in the incredible lotus position, legs folded with feet raised on opposite thighs.
Early one of the mornings of departure, the sky frayed red clouds on the sky of an intense blue in the rising sun.
Of the three excursions we will make from this small port, it was inevitable that at least once we would come across low tide. At the foot of the sturdy stilts, a shiny gray mud lets the sun shimmer in the puddles it retains, bland and sad like the ebbing lagoon in Venice, if it were not for the sharp glow of a sustained blue of the sea. nearby river.
It is the playground of fast crabs and amphibious beings which move by wiggling with the help of their strong fins behind the gills, like a soldier in maneuver crawling on the elbows; yet they are not catfish, but kinds of tiny monsters like mutating beings. Maybe we a few hundred million years ago ; our lovely ancestors.
In fact (photo from Wikipedia), they are amphibious fish (breathing through the gills in water and through the skin out of the water like frogs) that belong to the goby family. This subfamily is called "oxudercinae".
Pectoral fins by way of front legs, they are particularly adapted to the mangrove and its tides, digging the mud to avoid drying out. and even know how to jump to flee their predators.
Oh yes! for a little the predators even give them wings !! ...
NB- What is written in Western characters "ph ...", like "Phang" is pronounced "p ...", for our example "Pang".
Thus Phang Nga is pronounced Pan Ga, and Koh Phi Phi is pronounced Ko Pee.
At the end of the cul-de-sac parking lot, on high cement and wooden stilts, a platform made of more or less adjusted planks is equipped with large wooden tables and chairs, sheltered by a light roof that protects from the sun . It dominates by 4 meters the surface of the river at low tide.
This reception is the gathering place for the many excursions for boat departures to the archipelagos of the Gulf of Phang Nga.
Even early in the morning, the crowd is important. But the worst seems to be later in the day in full season, which we will fortunately be spared.
Next to a disused fuel dispenser, the platform in any case allows tourists to wait until everyone is gathered, guides included.
We take it a tea, a coffee, quickly prepared for less than one euro (30 baht) by an alert grandmother with a discreet smile, who scoops with a large metal bowl the hot water from a rustic kettle then poured into the cups.
Set back towards the back, three adjacent toilet cabins, like those we will often see outside villages and hotels.
Made of sheet metal without a roof (except that of the platform), a raised basin whose base is enclosed in a mound of cement allows the feet to be placed laterally : a compromise between standard toilets and Turkish toilets.
No other flow of well-used water than in the water of the small port by the back. Or would there be large well concealed cisterns, which we would have missed? ? No tinette either : corn as for tea or coffee, a sort of rudimentary scooping saucepan, floating in a large tub of water that we fill by opening a faucet.
To evacuate the excretions, it is enough to pour some contents of the water taken with this saucepan and to pour them in the basin. Shame on the one who forgets.
In the context, nothing but very normal and even respectable.
Sometimes elsewhere, paper allows the usual cleaning, but must be discarded, not in the bowl but in a large neighboring bin; a sort of cheerful, but curiously (still) odorless humid cluster.
Just upstream, the end of the parking lot terrace is laid out as a masonry quay with an asphalt slope, to which the Thai longtail boats and their noisy and agile engines dock in several rows.
At certain times, the comings and goings animate the small port without tension, whole families with boxes, vegetables, fruits, dogs and children, those who live on the islands of the archipelago that we are going to. to start to discover.
We understand the meaning of the English word "long tail boat", when we see the length of the axis at the end of which the propeller is located.
The engine is generally a 6-cylinder in-line recovered from a vehicle, and pivoted exactly in place of the rudder. The pilot, who holds in hand the end of the system only has to raise it to immerse the propeller in the water, and to move it sideways to orient the boat.
Our destinations in the Gulf of Phang Nga
After the traveling sheep voyeurs have been gathered, here is the time of departure.
The line of tourists descends a slope of sturdy planks made of odds and ends, and over the mud reaches a short wooden jetty. From there, we board the speedboat after taking off our shoes ; the shoes are kept by each one under the bench where one sits in the boat, sometimes in a large tote bag which each one will then try to find… shoe to his feet.
The crew makes it easier for the less agile, the less young, the decatis (follow my gaze) to cross the edge to access the heart of the boat, whose nacelle is covered with a canvas roof. Others in the bow, above the bow, are drunk on the sun and the whipping wind.
The three Yamaha V6 engines, or Suzuki, give their full measure and raise the bow that sometimes slams on the water and gives off a powerful mustache of foam. TO the rear a triple wave in incandescent wake, invigorating and fascinating. The deafening and regular noise of the engines ends, after a few minutes by rocking to drowsiness; the sluggish mind, awakened too soon, surrenders to iodine intoxication.
At the exit of the small estuary, the horizon widens after having skirted a little of the mangrove coast.
The complex, random, yet impassive archipelago forms there planes of calm seas, or opens more widely to the Andaman Sea elsewhere.
The swell then intensifies, the speed boat bears its name even better, and breaks the successive waves into repeated shocks. Ouch kidneys ! The standing position absorbs shocks better by playing on the flexibility of the joints of the legs and feet.
The guide's preventive discourse initially alerts those with kidney problems or others who fear seasickness. But all is going well.
When the route is long, especially towards the south and Koh Phi Phi or Maya Bay, the small crew and the guide distribute drinks and diversionary treats, kept cool in a kind of ice cube bath kept in a kind of huge cooler in the center of the boat.
Leftovers will be discarded in a large lidded bin next to it.
The immediate impression is the whimsical originality, almost fantastic at times, of these massive rocks, turrets, pitons, pillars, karst sugar loaves (roughly, of limestone origin, and eroded by water and carbon dioxide) drawn up on the horizon, in successive bluish planes which fade away.
Therein lies one of the explanations of these high cliffs sometimes almost straight:
- on a karstic islet, the water that is said here to be rather acidic penetrates the limestone and ends up creating faults, vertical cleavages, crevices.
- at the same time the sea is undermining, scouring the walls on the outskirts.
These two phenomena, combined over thousands of years, end up detaching whole sections of rock that tip over and fall at sea, releasing new walls that are also vertical and striated.
All in majesty, we crosses at full speed. Most have almost vertical cliffs, the walls of which are green in their tropical diversity.
Some are so steep that even the slightest vegetation struggles to cling to them, revealing long parallel black streaks, sometimes ocher in color. But vertical streaks ...
Which cannot be old horizontal strata that would have tipped over ass over head.
So what?
Simply, the traces of the slow flow of water through the limestone.
In its immemorial work of undermining, the sea, its waves, the tides, the storms excavate, dig, tap the foot of the walls. The overhang takes on often spectacular dimensions.
Anyway, this cannot be enough to explain why these karstic formations are found distributed as well at sea as in the jungle or the heights further north.
By simplifying to the extreme, to the geological scale, once the Indian continental plate violently collided with the immense Eurasian plate to the north 50 years ago million years, our peripheral region to the east was then subjected to movements, successive episodes of rising and retreating of the sea, periods of sedimentation, in particular coral reefs, and at the same time and above all sequences differential erosion (erosion that preserves hard rocks and wears out the softer ones). From there were born these remarkable karst formations.
Those from Ha Long Bay in southern Vietnam are said to have the same origin.
The innumerable islets today take on configurations of great diversity, concealing superb coves, elsewhere vaults of stalactites on the sea, isthmuses stretched out of light sand on a limpid sea which is tinted with an intense turquoise color but takes every imaginable shade, offering panoramas of great beauty, which man sometimes occupies in an original way.
Corn the massive nature of tourist visits ends up seriously damaging the environment and local biodiversity, despite some efforts to limit the effect on the part of the country.
Rather than describing each of our visits to the Gulf in detail, here are representative examples of the sites encountered, which ultimately cover all of our visits, ... starting with the worst.
Bamboo island, the islet to flee
What a curious idea for TO to imagine that we can find an attraction in this islet? Except that of applying to fill a space of time in the day.
Of course, the large sandy beach with a gentle slope is there, so vast that it seems moderately frequented when we refer to that of La Ciotat in July !!! The fairly clear warm water, of course turquoise, is frequented by some beautiful fish, ... and bathers and snorkellers.
Because all the fast boats on the planet and their modest long-tailed brothers seem there indeed, hull to hull, and the whole world too. To asians pale, fearing the sun like the plague (the Chinese are famous for not wanting to tan), and who wear cheek and nose protection, white plasters (rice powder?) similar to the black masks of the doctors of the Middle Ages rescuing the plague victims.
The toilets, half hidden in a grove, can be seen from a distance by their striking smell.
At the expense of the country, this is the only site where, despite the generally rudimentary nature of the toilets on many other islets, we have had to endure this inconvenience.
Aligned signs recall the penalties - very derisory - of 1000 baht (barely 25 €) to which one exposes oneself for such or such violation of the local regulations, moreover very respectable: prohibition of collect shells, drop anchor on corals, feed discreet fish or monkeys, leave rubbish, bring polystyrene foam ...
It is, in the north of the Koh Phi Phi archipelago, Koh Mai Phai, which is also called for tourists "Bamboo Island".
We suppose that other parts of the islet (550m by 660m) are much more attractive, more authentic, and that there are the famous bamboos and perhaps some sulking monkeys ...
Gulf of Phang Nga
three beautiful sites, well overgrown
Koh Phi Phi Ley
Despite everything, these superb harmonies between the sea, the sandy shores, the intense tropical flora, the most unexpected hazards of the karstic relief do not fail to create landscapes of dreams, or in any case of remarkable originality.
This is the case of the site called "Maya Bay" (see Google Earth photo below) for tourists, on Koh Phi Phi Ley island.
Crossing the entrance to a large cirque of high rocks (more than 100 meters high in places), at the bottom of which a vast beach unfolds under a background of rich tropical vegetation rising in tiers is a real wonder. Its beauty has not escaped certain filmmakers, since "The Beach" was filmed there with Di Caprio, V. Le Doyen and G. Canet.
The bottom of the bay rises slowly, so that tourist boats, depending on the tide, can only anchor themselves in chains at some point. 40 meters from the shore. And here is that to reach this one, the amused sheep, from the foot of the short ladder of the boat, wander in 50 cm of water on a smooth sand bottom, avoiding here and there a few rocks.
Of course the whole world is there, despite the early hour of the morning, and after almost an hour of rapid travel to get there from our pier.
Then the passage widens and descends between the high rocks, to to achieve finally, after having crossed the isthmus to a wooden platform fitted out to contemplate the panorama on the other side, through a sort of rock window. Another large natural opening is pierced at its base given on the water.
Access to the platform is via a stepped wooden pontoon, at the end of which one waits in a noria before reaching the observation platform. Modest when we arrived, the length of the queue had doubled when we left !!
The panorama on the other side overlooks a sea of amazingly clear reefs, between huge rocks undermined at their base, one of which evokes a colossal quiz button.
We will learn after our return that in April 2018, the Thai authorities closed this site for several months (from June 1 to September 30, 2018) to allow the recomposition of biodiversity, seriously degraded by the 4,000 daily tourists who roam it.
And then allow access to only one daily quota maximum of 2000 visitors.
The condition of the sand paths is indeed perfectly groomed, and the two groups of buildings for the toilets are clearly suffering from the excess frequentation, without giving off the penetrating scents of Bamboo Island.
Leaving this protected bay, this time in the northern part of this island Koh Phi Phi Ley, on the east coast of the small peninsula which stretches out, here is a crystalline snorkelling spot, almost at the foot of a very large crevice in the cliff where the famous swallows' nests are gathered by the "sea gypsies", the Moken.
Some scaffolding testifies to this.
The discovery continues, behind this beautiful beach, after having crossed a kind of passage a little deep through a more sparse flora, between strange trees on stilts, in fact their roots (like opera dancers perched on their tips).
They are "pandanus" also called elsewhere "vacoas", a probable deformation of "baquois", their other generic name. In English they are called "screw pine". These are not palm trees but rather tall grasses from a family that marked our school memories: monocots. Finally if their roots can evoke the mangrove tree, error, they are not at all.
It is often from their long woven leaves that the partitions and exterior walls of old local houses are made.
They have also been found on the small "virgin island" to the northwest.
Hey no! the color seen behind, which could be turquoise, is not the sea, but a colored protective barrier.
On the other hand, the brand new tsunami evacuation panel is a reality; that we do not wish to experiment there. The way of flight is probably towards the many surrounding heights.
We even saw in this place a kind of lamentable manatee pale snorkel, attempting to observe close funds. Various types of bulky corals in the form of large cushions, or short vertical tubes from which the dreaded moray head did not emerge, line the rocks.
Single the disgusting quality of my underwater camera deprives of restoring the beauty of fish and sea urchins, rocked by the swell.
Koh Phi Phi Don
Just north of Koh Phi Phi Ley, the island of Koh Phi Phi Don is the largest of this archipelago, of course named Koh Phi Phi .
With Koh Phi Phi Don, here is a first inhabited island. Those we have described so far in this chapter were not originally, and are now only during the day, for tourism purposes.
Nearby, a ready-made village on stilts of local materials, and which seems to have retained the beautiful traditional architecture, is under construction.
We notice there, as on all exterior worksites, that the workers protect themselves from the persistent bite of the sun by completely covering their body of a double (or triple?) thickness of light clothing.
Likewise, the head is protected by a large braided hat, covering a large scarf which is also mask on the mouth.
The Thai silhouettes, lanky and lean, rarely suffer from overweight.
This protective garment which erases gender (this word has become forcibly, fashionable) thus makes all workers androgynous beings.
In any case, and without regret after reading a few other reports, we will not see to the south from the isthmus the village of the bay of Ton Sai (on the left in the photo below).
The Koh Phi Phi Don tombolo seen from the heights would nevertheless have well deserved that we linger there (photo by sullen sky captured on the internet).
Its isthmus, called "tombolo" in geomorphological vocabulary, approached from the north or the south. We come there after a long boat trip, then a emollient bath on a beautiful beach in the Baie des Singes to the northwest. Of course, no monkeys ... Landing is done on a beautiful bay where a few small modern and stylish hotels dominate the beach, overlooked steep hills covered with dense vegetation.
On the hot sand on the way to the restaurant, signs indicate in detail the escape routes in the event of a tsunami.
Big hall, adjacent to an opulent hotel, the dining room is a sort of meal factory, which is linked between the groups arriving in succession. The Chinese who are behind us are numerous ; they hurry without regard for us, who are barely finishing eating. But we must clear, hastened by the waiters who surround the last latecomers, drink with one hand, sticky pastry with the other. Barely enough time to see that we haven't forgotten anything on the seats.
Quite unpleasant impression which seems to be a general rule, not necessarily attributable to follower group.
However, at those who are spontaneously led to cohabit with such groups of tourists from the Middle Kingdom, obviously seized with an instinct gregarious survival, we recommend a strategy of escape - necessarily - peripheral, of spatial or chronological flight or avoidance.
Otherwise, it will be necessary to accept to undergo this modern, painless and insidious version of the "Chinese torture".
Yet what civilization is more cultivated than this?
But no mistake, elsewhere, they are really women ... here Muslim workers on the west coast of the island of Phuket, including the same work dress avoids the use of the veil for the occasion.
Khao Ta Poo, "James Bond Island"
The other unmissable visit is that of the so-called "James Bond" islet, because there were filmed scenes (others were filmed in Ha Long Bay in South Vietnam) of "The man with the gun. 'gold' in 1974 where Roger Moore, the elegant English mollasson, ex-Ivanohé, played the famous spy.
Because the main attraction, perfectly spectacular, is this rocky outcrop 40 meters of the Koh Khao Phing Kan pair of islands.
Note that here, in the name of these islands are associated the two words koh and khao, to mean island-hill. This is often also the case elsewhere when we designate this kind of island which is also a little mountain.
Why not instead see a pen from Titan, which for a bit would dip its nib in ink ... from the China Sea?
And then, cabotin like many others, we can recognize undeniable photogenic qualities when the light changes, with its verdant hood with perfectly slush-frozen tropical tufts.
This configuration presents a certain fragility, which nevertheless valiantly withstood the tsunami of 2004, which was highly devastating here.
But two precautions are better than one: the circulation of boats is prohibited in its vicinity; what elsewhere we do not yet manage to preserve for example the unstable Venice which oscillates on the mud, is eaten away and decrepit.
After having landed on the closest of the islands, and traversed a path in balcony which rises, here we are in front of the "nail", which is not only that of the spectacle.
Attendance is not excessive. On the small quay, a few tourist shops and clean toilets, open to the sky but out of sight.
Next to it, a colossal slant of rock has come to block against the rock, a probable illustration of ancient seismic movements. But also refuge of bladders in a hurry in some very fragrant nooks and crannies.
The very name of this rock evokes its shape, since in the Thai language it means "nail", which is actually reminiscent of its allure : 20 meters high, with a diameter of about 8 meters for the main upper part, but which narrows to 4 meters on an underwater depth of about 8 meters. Always the same work of scouring the sea and the tides.
Behind, erosion has carved out sort of through crevices, Quirky and spectacular caves, spontaneous sculptures of stalactites, some of which powerfully overhang the small bay at the back.
Most astonishing is the way in which this pierced block of rock constitutes a plateau itself deeply eaten away by the sea below.
The access was a little concrete for tourists. If it weren't for the discomfort of passing certain guts, it almost looks like a Disney attraction. Anyway, everything looks polished and smooth where it can go the man.
On the other hand, everywhere else in the rocky environment, overhanging the sea or in many other dark crevices, the sharp edges of stalactites and stalagmites are intact.
Then all it takes is a long tail boat, and the magic of the panorama operates.
diodon
