My Take in Life

You could only claimed to have visited Phuket after you’d soaked yourself in the beautiful sea waters there. I can certainly testify for that.

After two days of touring, the skins around my body are itching to get into the sea waters. How one could resist? The crystalline waters, the sandy white beaches, the sounds of the waves… that’s my perfect paradise.

It’s really popular among tourists to go for a tour to Phi Phi island; I had decided on something different. I had spent some time studying Phi Phi tour itineraries when I was there and find them quite rushed with about seven spots to visit. Preferring a  relaxed trip, I had decided to go for a tour to Khai islands.

The Khai islands are a group of three islands situated at the north of Phi Phi island, namely Khai Nok, Khai Nui and Khai Nai. Most Phi Phi tours would include a visit to Khai Nok: and that’s where we had spent most of our day.

The thing I like about tours in Phuket is that they really made sure that the tour is a pleasant experience: from comfortable vans to pick you up from your hotel to ultra friendly, patient and helpful tour guides.

I really enjoyed the sights along the way to the port: one that I find most interesting is when a line of school buses passed us by. The buses appeared to be from the same school and each bus was packed with smiling faces of school children. As I noticed the long line of buses we had passed by, my curiosity was piqued and I counted them as they passed through – the last, twelfth bus passed by as we reached the port, estimating about hundreds of students in them.

I wonder where they are going? Are they going on a school trip? Or are they actually rural kids being fetched to town so that they could go to school?

After collecting our snorkeling gear, we were soon departed to the islands via speedboat. It was raining as the boat charged through the slightly rough seas. The barrage of rain drops invaded the interiors, making us wet well before we reach the shores of Khai Nok.

Interestingly, the rain slowly came to a stop as the boat approached the island. I took that as a blessing. The boat was anchored down and the passengers finally set foot on the fine white sands. The beauty of the place captivates me instantly: completely exceeded my expectations in a way that no photograph could do any justice to capture that magical sensation.

On the beach, a more livelier view was in front of me: huge wooden huts of restaurants and shops that supports the livelihood of locals and rows of beach chairs and parasols that complements the whiteness of the sands beneath it with vibrant colours.

We were one of the first who had reached the island, and that gave me the impression that we had the such a secluded paradise all to ourselves. Everyone around us were excited as well, most of them gleefully got their feet in shallow waters almost immediately after they had reached here. Some of them, including myself, couldn’t help in whipping out our cameras and snapping away.

Shirts off and it’s time to get myself soaked in the waters that I’d been longing for! As I wade myself into the waters, I was instantly welcomed by a large school of fishes coming towards me. These fishes are accustomed to having visitors and are actually checking whether we had any bread to feed them. They are really adorable when they swam and circled around me and swiftly keeping a distance when I tried to touch them.

Going a bit deeper in the waters with my snorkeling gear gave a more disheartening view: all I could see is a graveyard of corals. The seabeds are barren with the remains of corals looking like jagged fossils. I feel sad when I looked such a tragedy and wondered whether is there ways for us to protect and preserve the natural treasures that has been bestowed upon us.

I was still consoled to see the still vibrant marine life and fishes that still treat the place as home. This is just the perfect place to try underwater photography for the first time. And boy was it tough!

The first and most obvious challenge is that the shutter button on the camera is slightly harder to press using an underwater case. In terms of skills, underwater photography is essentially dealing with fishes that are constantly swimming around and the lighting conditions aren’t that ideal than when we were on land: both of which adds to the difficulty of taking good, stable shots.

The most subtle and most important challenge I had faced in underwater photography is  in controlling and orienting my body movements in the water.  There’s just a lot of factors that comes into play here: my physical fitness, my buoyancy and the surrounding waves. It’s really an art to keep yourself still in one place while patiently waiting for that Kodak moment to arrive.

In addition to that, I immediately learned a lesson as soon as I see this right next to me when I’m busy taking shots:

A jelly fish of the size of a volley ball slowly hovers right next to me! This scared the hell out of me knowing that getting stung by them is no laughing matter. Keeping my composure and calm, I slowly keeping a distance with the jellyfish until it hovers away gracefully away from me.

Lesson learned? Always keep an eye on your surroundings when you are in touch with nature, I’m at the mercy of any creature and the landscape that surrounds me.

When I’m not soaking myself in the sea, I find myself having lunch with unlimited supply of Pepsi, walking along the coast and simply laying down on the chair and enjoying the view in relaxation.

I could go on forever about my love for beaches and the sea: I wrap this up with a brief mention about Kata beach.

It is a really different experience between the beach along the coast of Phuket itself (e.g. Kata, Karon, Patong, Surin etc.) and the ones on the island. Key difference: Tourist. Lots of them, in fact. Kata beach is really a lively place from noon till the afternoon, with tourists all round the world enjoyed themselves with activities and relaxation. And with the waves are higher in times of monsoon, there are lots of surfers that braves the waves and glides skillfully at each coming wave.

In the evenings, Kata beach is more peaceful with fewer people around and still have a lot of liveliness and soul. Instead of seeing people laying down to get a tan when the sun is high up, I saw people jogging along the shore and another group of people playing football. There were also families who were enjoying time with their kids playing, giggling and shouted in excitement for any new discoveries they had encountered.

As for me, I just sat there and enjoyed the sea breeze.

(Note: The image gallery below is a mixture of photos between those taken at the Khai islands and Kata beach, arranged in a thematic order. Hence the tone may seems a bit out-of-place due to the weather when the photographs were taken)

It’s July – the monsoon months in Phuket, a time when one would have to expect some wind, rain and rough seas. Although it’s a low season in Phuket, you’ll easily notice that this warning doesn’t hinder fellow travellers around the world to enjoy their getaway in this lovely land.

9 o’clock in the morning, our day started off with tints of gray, the skies are covered with an overcast of lumping clouds. As one would look up the skies with worried eyes, I could only notice how fast the clouds crawls from one side of the other with no sun in sight.

“I had signed up for a sight-seeing tour today…” I thought to myself, praying hard that I won’t be completely drenched by rain when I got back. Or worse, disappointed by the fact that all I can see is hours of pouring rain. I kept my finger crossed wishing that mother nature would have mercy upon us and not spoiling our tour agenda, despite knowing full well that such wishes are futile and well beyond our control.

It’s an hour drive in a van from the coasts of Phuket to Phang Nga: the southern province of Thailand right next to Phuket. As the van zoomed through towards its destination, the sights were transforming rapidly: from the familiar bustling streets along the seaside became a winding journey of the mountain terrains of Kathu district; then passing through the low concrete jungles of Phuket city going straight up to a rural highway as the sights of buildings are starting to thin and you could see plantation grounds along the sides of the road. It’s really a different part of Phuket that most travelers to Phuket would probably not discover, either because they’d fallen asleep in the van, or that one would have lost interest with boring plains.

Our first stop is the Wat Suwan Kuha, also known as “that temple with a big Buddha in the cave”. As the name implies, you’d find a reclining Buddha statue lying within a limestone cave together with a host of other ancient Buddha statues. You’d also notice a big white Cedhi on the left housing the bones of the local governor who arranged the construction of the temple and the bones of his family.

The temple is also known as the Monkey Cave temple; and, as we’d expect, there were monkeys roaming the surroundings. Though, to be honest, monkeys are quite common in some places of Phuket.

Coming back to the weather for a bit (probably it’s just me minding the weather too much), but it appeared to me that the weather in Phuket is quite whimsical  during the monsoon season. As we headed to Floating Muslim Village in Koh Panyi, it constantly alternates between bright sunshine and a cloudy overcast. As if the clouds wanted to play a game of peek-a-boo; or maybe they are just playfully scheming on the timing to shed its shower of rain upon us. Starting to look at the sunnier side of things, I decided that the changing weather gave me a chance to take capturing the ever-changing expressions of my surroundings.

I had my moment of surprise during lunch at the Floating Muslim Village: and it’s not about the wooden houses that were stilted above the seas. It’s the 1.5L Coke bottle that is made out of glass – I couldn’t contain my curiosity and amusement upon seeing it, as I’d always seen them in plastic bottles.

Moments later, a downpour. It’s a beautiful sight – the charm of the village is quite hard to put in words: when sunny, the village is full of colours, warmth and vitality; when raining, the surrounding seas, the curtaining rain and the bluish tint gives the village a sense of calm with a tint of melancholy.

It’s still drizzling when I had my first experience of riding a canoe to look at the beautiful islands around Phuket. And I did ended up wet after all.

However, I felt sorry for my camera: the surrounding beauty captivates me to the point that I’d shown no mercy to my camera – snapping away knowing full well the risk that rain water could spoil it.

As the guide paddled through the seas, I was mesmerized by the limestone walls and the vegetation that grows on it. I really enjoyed looking at these natural work of art, taking in the formations, varying colours and structure of these stone walls. Occasionally we’ll wade through a valley and there are mangroves with its trunk mostly submerged by the rising tide of sea water. The branches are low and I could easily reach to them and touch the leaves.

Ah, the wonders of nature.

We ended our afternoon tour with another wonderful sight of nature: Ko Tapu, more popularly known as James Bond Island by locals and foreigners alike. There’s two distinguishing features that really makes it memorable: a lonely rock column in the middle of the sea, as well as a limestone mountain that has been split due to an earthquake, leaving a perfectly triangular hollow in the middle. It looks as it had been split perfectly with a sword and one half of it leans towards the other as support. One could only look in awe at such a majestic sight.

As we ride the speedboat back to the port, the skies are still covered with clouds. Having thoroughly enjoyed the greens and stones throughout the day, we departed with the beautiful yet unpredictable sights of the boundless ocean extending to the horizons, small islands and clouds among the grayish blue skies. At this time, the weather didn’t bother me anymore: there I was, enjoying the clouds as the boat was cruising back towards land.