6-27 Railay Day 6

The main event of today was a sunset snorkel cruise out to four locations with dinner on a remote beach. For $25, we weren't expecting a whole lot but nevertheless were excited to get out on the water. We all had slept in pretty late so the 2pm departure came quickly. We had been mentioning the trip to several other travelers over the past 2 days, so the 5 person roster turned into 20. A young british couple in their early 20's joined us. They were Andrew and Lara from Manchester. No matter where we were on Railay, we kept running into them. They were a lot of fun to hang out with and joined us many nights for dinner or cocktails. We boarded 2 longtails at Railay West and set out for 3 snorkel sites to the South around the islands Koh Poda, Chicken, and others. Vanessa and our other friends were the originators of the snorkel trip and we were happy to be invited along. Scarlet also came along on the trip. She's a gorgeous English girl that's on holiday from college for the past 2 months. She had befriended Vanessa and friends about the same time we did and was a very welcome addition to the group. Funny enough, she was in Chiang Mai the same time Chris and I were, and had been to several of the same places.
After 20 minutes of cruising we made it to our first snorkel site, being the side of a 30 meter limestone tower and 6 meters of water surrounding it. We all raced to get on our fins, goggles, and snorkels to take full advantage of the 20 minutes allotted for this site. Overall I was pretty unimpressed with the site. Much of the coral had been killed and ground up, which might have occurred from the tsunami. It was enjoyable to swim along the cliff face and under the overhangs where the constant wave action has undermined the cliff. Near the end of the dive I found myself surrounded by a school of thousands of small fish, maybe 2" long with bright silver scales and a neon blue lateral line. I remained still as the school formed a giant doughnut shape around me. It was something straight out of the TV program Planet Earth. We climbed back into the longtails and and 15 minutes later we dove in at site number two.
This site was much more full of life. Vibrant corals and wave action attracted large schools of marine life. Groups 20 strong of bright purple and yellow parrot fish patrolled the bottom, nipping away at the coral. The number and diversity of fish challenged anything I'd ever seen in Maui, Zanzibar, Mexico, or Fiji. It was like swimming in an aquarium! Along the bottom was the occasional sea cucumber. At 12" long, they are slimy and are commonly called 'sea poop' due to their appearance. Chris and Scarlet had a few minutes earlier tried a sneaky trick of yanking off my swim trunks, so I got my revenge on Scarlet by placing a giant sea cucumber down the back of her bikini. She had no idea what a sea cucumber was and did not notice them on the bottom. Imagine pulling a huge slimy thing that looked like a huge poop out the back of your pants. Then you can imagine her reaction. Oh, but it didn't stop there. I was skirting the far end of a limestone tower when out of the corner of my eye, a dark shape closed in, crossing my field of vision. It's silhouette was that which strikes fear into most all who encounter it. I instantly recognized it as a 5 foot blacktip reef shark. I'd swam with their cousins, the white tip, in underwater caves in Maui before so I knew their temperament. My next thought was, "who can I scare the crap out of"? Scarlet is deathly afraid of sharks and was the obvious choice, so I motioned her to follow me. We swam in the direction of the shark, nearing a submerged passage of 10 meters connecting to the bright blue water of the other side of the small island. Just as I had hoped, the shark detected us and cut across our field of view along the coral and into the passage. It was an ominous dark silhouette against the bright blue emptiness behind it. The next thing I know, Scarlet has jumped into my arms and I'm fully submerged. It took quite some time to calm her nerves after that one! It was really tough to get back in the boat, there was just so much to see and the water was the perfect temperature.
The third and final snorkel site was offshore a sandy beach. Everyone wasted their time near shore, which was mostly dead corals and tiny fish. I knew better that the real life was concentrated out in 4 meters of water near a slight drop off to 15 meters. Snorkeling is just not the same as SCUBA diving, but you can get a great, though fleeting glance at some stuff if you can dive deep and have a trained eye. Down at 6 meters along the face of the drop off there were beautiful corals anemones, and larger fish like grouper and puffer fish. The highlight was snorkeling on the surface as I passed over a black & white banded sea krait. They are not aggressive at all and are known to curl around the arms of divers. One bite though, and it's all over. The venom will kill you in minutes. The snake was curious and came up towards me. I was near Scarlet, so I grabbed her and motioned us to move away calmly, trying not to startle it. It followed for about 5 meters then wandered off-- what a relief!
We were dropped off soon afterward on a remote beach island about 30 minutes before sunset. Everyone was kept busy with cold beer, tic tac toe in the sand, and taking dozens of photos. 300 meters across from us was Chicken Island. As the tide dropped, a narrow spit of sand began to form a land bridge of a mere 5 meters width. We all found ourselves drawn to this phenomenon and the novelty of walking across. With just inches of water concealing the spit, it appeared from a distance to be a deep channel between the islands that we miraculously were walking across. As we walked across, we marveled at unbelievable views from all directions. We kept our cameras out and snapped away at the moments we believed to the climax of the sunset. Sure enough, moments later we found ourselves taking more shots as the colors and contrast deepened to the point of being surreal. The intensity of the pinks and oranges were like nothing myself or anyone had ever seen. Along side a group of 20+ world travelers, we all agreed that this sunset took the #1 or #2 spot for best sunset of our lives. For me, sunsets and sunrises on the Serengeti are in a class of their own. If anything comes close though, it's this. Towering thunderheads and massive banks of varying types of clouds moved across the sky, both manipulating and being transformed by the light as they passed. As darkness set in, we were treated to a gourmet meal of prawns & veggies in a coconut curry sauce. Once again, the Thai food was delicious and we all went back for seconds.
A set of tiki torches gave the beach around us a soft flickering glow, but it was not enough to expose the shenanigans of a precocious 9 year old named Sahat. As he shuffled through our beach blanket encampment, he wore his trademark expression, a warning of his mischievous intentions. As he kneeled down, shuffling from one group to the other, screams and nervous laughing erupted. Imagine for a moment a small Thai boy shuffling towards you with his hands stretched out, hovering across the sand in front of him. As you look down at his hands, you realize he's holding two huge sand crabs. With claws on full display ready to snap on anything unfortunate enough to contact them, these two crabs blazed across the sand, legs kicking up sand as Sahat powered them forward. After some real scares and a lot of laughs, Sahat found some great role models: Chris Marsh and Mike Shannahan. They dug a big pit in the sand and Sahat put the crabs in to do battle. Sahat yelled repeatedly. "muay thai, muay thai!" as they battled. Bets were made and the action was intense. The crabs weren't harming each other but we ended it pretty quick so as to not further encourage Sahat. This kid was really something. He'll approach complete strangers. When he saw Chris for the first time, he wasn't wearing a shirt. Sahat walked up to him and starting swirling his finger around on Chris's stomach. He was intrigued at the hairy beast and it resulted in some laughter.
Sahat's fearlessness and confidence seems boundless. He's really a wonderful kid and a joy to have around, which is why Vanessa and James had brought him along. The two of them were watching over him for the day. For the last 2 months or so, the two of them have been like a big brother and sister to him. His entire family was killed in the tsunami in 2004 and by sheer luck, his grandparents were able to track him down and take him in. Tex also took a liking to Sahat. Tex has become his hero and with his help has become like a little spider monkey, scrambling up vertical walls. Even Mike took to Sahat. Mike found some long bamboo and was practicing some sword moves on the beach. Sahat grabbed a bamboo sword and attacked. Some was sparring and the other was hilarious theatrics on Mike's part.
After the crab battles, Vanessa broke out the Poi. Poi is fire dancing. At the end of a 3 foot chain is an orb that can be set on fire for a few minutes and will hold the flame even at high speeds. She had been practicing for a while now and the darkness of a remote beach island with her new friends seemed like a perfect setting to demonstrate her new talent. The two balls of fire spun around her like electrons around a nucleus. One false move could result in a steel flaming ball to the face or set her hair on fire. As the speed picked up, the flaming balls turned to full rings of fire moving around her. We'd seen a few poi demonstrations before, but this one, with the aid of the perfect backdrop, was a jaw-dropper.
Soon after, full darkness had set in and we could see lightning in the distance coming from ominous thunderheads towering up tens of thousands of feet into the sky. We quickly made our way to the longtail boats, guided by Sahat and his tiki torch. After a tense 20 minutes of trying to get one boat started, we set off toward Railay, who's faint lights flickered 10 miles in the distance. We made a stop at the Southern end of Railay along a dark shoreline of cliffs. This was the 'night swim' they had been advertising. The dark waters here were a great area to excite plankton into giving off their bright green bio-luminescent flashes of light. After much reluctance by all to jump into a pitch black ocean, several of us jumped in. As we kicked our feet and moved our arms, the ocean came alive. Like neon green submarine fire flies, the plankton flashed around us. We all got in a tight circle and thrashed about furiously, making the area light up. I've done this before in Maui on a night dive, but it was pretty cool to do with a large group. 10 minutes later we arrived in Railay. We'd been out on the water 7 hours and loved every minute of it.

Ahhhhh, another day in paradise.