Tourism "Thai Style"

Trang is a sleepy little town just south of Krabi and Phuket, the most touristic destinations of Thailand.

The whole East coast of Thailand, from Trang to Phuket is like a bigger version of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. The very typical "karst" or limestone outcrops litter the coast and the bays. Those isolated rocks, scenic islands covered in jungle, secret interior lagoons and deserted white sand beaches used to be a paradise for the famously feared pirates of the Malaca straight.

One of the limestone headlands of the area

I was really eager to visit the Famous Emerald Cave, that the Thai people call a "hong", which is an internal laggon, created by the fall of the inside part of one of those limestone rock, usually accessible only by the sea and thru a small cave bowell.

The only way to go there was to book a snorkelling tour which would also visit the "hong"...not our cup of tea, as we usually like to travel independantly...but sometimes you have to make consessions...

We nearly turned down the offer when they told us there were 40 people in the tour...if we wanted to feel like pirates discovering a tresure cave, it was not going to be easy with 40 other tourists!

Anyway, after much hesitations, we went...

What a surprise; when we arrived on the boat, we found 40 thai people, fully dressed with life jackets and every sort of device to avoid getting too much tan!...Just the opposite of the crowd of european tourists we were expecting. I actually felt a bit out of place with my bikini in the middle of this crowd which would swim in short, Tshirts and life jackets!

Find the odd one out!

They warmely welcomed us, and we soon became the main attraction, everybody wanted their picture taken with us...I even saw some, more shy, which would secretly take pictures of us while pretending to be photographing the scenery...quite a funny change of roles!!!

Some would speak enmglich and act as translators for the others, asking us all sort of questions...once more I secretly decided to learn Thai as soon as I could!

All the explanations where in Thai. Luckily we met a Thai girl, Jang, which spoke really good english, and she translated everything for us...

Jang and her friends, ready for snorkelling

We were quite surprised when we found out that most of those people didn't actually know how to swim (hence the life jackets) and were snorkelling for the first or second time in their life!

I couldn't help but be impressed by their curiosity and their courage to jump in the water and snorkel in the deep sea without knowing how to swim!

To help them, the crew had a rope and some life saving buoy floating beahind the boat, which they would grab in pods and hang to with one hand while feeding the fishes to see them closer...

This was a totally different way of pratising snorkelling and tourism, and we learned a lot about Thai culture and mentality that day.

The best part of it was the Famous Emerald Cave.

To enter the internal laggoon, we had to swim thru the cave in pitch darkness...to avoid panics, the guides built a long strip of people each of whom grabs the life jacket of the person in front of them (be careful; women and men are separated, in darkness this wouldn't be correct otherwise!)...

We form a long red caterpillar which slowly winds its way to the cave, under the flashes of the onlooking tourists (who, we wonder how, found trips where they are only 4 ot 8 in a boat!...probably from one of the private first class resorts of the surrouding islands) quite amazed at the way Thai people do things!

When we enter the cave, we understand the name; the sunrays, filtered by the lush vegetation, light the entrance of the cave of a emerald green colour...it's breathtaking!...but not for long...as we enter the pitch dark of the dark bowell, swimming in dark water, the guides (supposedly to avoid panic amidst our non-swimmer companions) start shouting songs and rimes, which are repeated in chorus by the red caterpillar...

I am laughing like crazy to the whole atmosphere and funny crowd behaviour, when we come across another huge caterpillar, singing and crying like us...this is a long serie of high fives between the numerous arms of the 2 caterpillars...both waving crazily the fluorescent bracelets that were given to us by the guides to avoid mixing the groups...

I am crying from so much laughing!

We finally emerge on the other side of the bowell. The inside lagoon it stunning; surrounded by hight walls covered in lush vegetation, turquoise waters, white sandy beach...

This would deserve silence and loneliness...but this is not quite possible!...the tourists that are present in the cave at the same time as our noisy group are dispointed; they wanted the paradise for themselves...

A marvel of nature invaded by crowds of red life jackets taking pictures of other red life jackets.

I understand them, and would have felt the same probably...but after living such a wonderful and heart warming experience and learned so much about the Thai, I don't really care anymore about the beautiful scenery...

After all, we don't travel for the beaches, which are the same in the whole world, but for the people, their culture and diversity...And today we experienced part of the Thai culture...not the one of the monuments and History, but the real one, lively, noisy and so touching!

Genuine Famous Thai Smile!

03:47 - 17/03/2007 - Ajouter un commentaire