Friday 26 December 2008

Friday 26 December 2008

Left Koh Kraden this morning and motored a couple of miles over to Koh Muk (pronounced Mook), where we took the dinghy to the Emerald Cave, swam through an 80 metre unlit cave tunnel (with torches), and came out into the Lost World. What an amazing place! As you approach the end of the tunnel, there is an ethereal green glow in the water and suddenly you swim out into daylight, in a lagoon about an acre in size, maybe less, with a sandy beach at one side, and vertical rainforest jungle climbing up a thousand feet. The light is muted and soft as the sun doesn’t shine directly into the lagoon except probably at midday for a while. Apparently there are large bats living in the cave but we didn’t see any.

There were only six or seven other people there, so it was quiet and lovely, but after about 30 minutes we could hear a sound like the muffled roar of a football crowd, gradually getting louder. After ten minutes of this, suddenly a human train of lifejacket-clad people emerged blinking into the light, all talking at the same time. Time to leave. By the time we’d put our swim fins and mask and snorkels back on, there were about seventy people in the lagoon, and as we left the cave entrance and swam to the dinghy, tourist boats arrived one after another, until it looked like there would’ve been 150 people squashed into that lovely lagoon. We were very lucky to have it to ourselves as long as we did.