Island Hush

In a celebrated novel written in the 1750’s, mariner Robinson Crusoe is washed up on an uninhabited island. He survives for years on the abundant natural resources he found on new home. Despite a gruelling adaptation to his new life, he slowly learns to appreciate the joys of desert island solitude, far from the strains of the ‘modern world’ as he knows it; surrounded by the serenity of nature.

Well over two centuries after Daniel Defoe’s novel first appeared, modern man’s yearning for what the travel writer and thinker Pico Iyer once referred to as “the absence of distraction” is even greater than ever. Our urban-oriented lives hurtle along at break-neck pace; intoxicated by technology, we seek our entertainment not from our environment but from digital gadgets. Time off for modern man has become a luxury; nature and respite, extinct commodities.

The sea has long been one of nature’s great healers, “endless and sublime, the image of eternity” wrote Lord Byron in 1818. If the mint-mouthwash painted ocean around Krabi does not dissolve modern man’s anxieties, then its spectacular pelagic sculptures will. Here, serenity is not just a transient mood; it is part of the landscape.

For thousands of years, the shores of the Andaman region have boasted rich wildlife, myriad myths and captivating oceanic palettes. Krabi’s finest beaches are located on a narrow, secluded tongue of a peninsula, where even the local boatmen refer to Krabi town – a mere 45 minutes speedboat away – as ‘The Mainland.’

A short boat ride away, Koh Poda (Koh means island) is everything that the would-be Crusoes rave about: a sand causeway as soft as icing sugar unravelling between two small islands, either side of which lap transparent, cut-diamond waters. However, at the wrong time of the day or season, it can metamorphose into a multitudinous mass of sightseers, one of the many perils of popularity.

By contrast, the sublime silence that enshrouds Koh Hong is captivating. Slipping through a narrow entry no wider than a small boat, Koh Hong reveals at its centre a magnificent, cathedral-sized lagoon of turquoise waters surrounded on all sides by unassailable cliff walls.

Venturing inside these hongs, or rooms, is a moment of revelation; the colours, the imperious nature of the karst limestone; the silence, broken only by a shriek of a sea eagle as it sculls across the Wedgewood blue skies.

Back on the Krabi peninsula, a wander through the lush gardens of Rayavadee resort evokes a reassuring sense of peace. Pink and scarlet crab-claw flora drips down like melted wax into shallow streams running with vermilion carp. Just metres away, the surf creeps furtively along Hat Noppharat Thara’s golden sands.

Above its main restaurant, al fresco diners are overlooked by the stark silhouette of the Krabi cliffs where, in the dry season, rock climbers vertically skate the sheer tangerine-streaked rock face.

‘Les’ Dawson is a local kayak guide who takes visitors out over Krabi’s placid Cheow Lan lake, where the verdant, limestone-pinnacled jungle wilderness yields sights of wild elephants drinking at a pool, mouse deer rustling through the overgrowth, or the chillingly distinct paw print of an elusive mountain tiger in the wet sand of the lake shore.

These are not just the experiences of a weekend, but the memories of a lifetime. Yet as Thailand’s southern region surges from rural backwater-dom to tourism hub, the ocean’s marine life has inevitably suffered. The empty, 17-km stretch of sand at Mai Khao in northwest Phuket offers a refuge for some of the Andaman’s most endangered inhabitants – sea turtles, which come to nest annually along the western shores of the Andaman coast.

By Charlotte Shalgosky

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Courtesy of lifestyleandtravel.com