Rest Day in Pak Bara: Ko Bulan Island day trip

November 17, 2006

"I thought we had left it behind" Rachel says....but...then... there it was! A rooster crowing Er-er-er-errrr!!

And we are up and eating breakfast at the hotel at 7am. We wait until 0830 to go to the tour agent. Patrick pays the rest of the fee and we wait at a table. She walks down the street talking on her cell phone. Then she gives us two life jackets and about 5 minutes later gives us snorkeling gear. She talks on her cell phone again. And she talks with a man that had two containers with him. It is after 9am, the agreed time to leave. We think the man is our boat "driver"...don't know if we are waiting on him or he is waiting on us, like when we were waiting for the ride to Jakarta.

Finally, he signals us to go, we walk to the pier and he points to the long boat that is tied to a fishing boat, that's tied to another fishing boat, that's tied to yet another fishing boat that's tied to the dock.

Patrick climbs down the metal ladder that is hooked over the concrete ledge. Rachel hands down the gear to him, then nervously climbs down. We ease our way across the fishing boats that sometime drift apart again passing the gear across. We settle in under the canopy. The driver disappears returning with bags of ice that followed the same process of tossing first onto each of the next boat. Patrick helps with the last step of getting the bags on our boat. Then we wait for "oil". By about 0930 the motor is started, boat is untied and we are off.

The wooden longboat is about 20 feet long and 5 feet wide, in the back is an engine mounted on a long shaft with a propeller at the end. By tilting the propeller down into the water the boat starts to move; by swiveling it the boat turns. The engine is very loud, but we make a pretty good speed. We follow the river channel out to sea, then turn North. This morning we decided to go for the much smaller Koh Bulon (google Koh Bulon) in lieu of Ko Tarutao because "the snorkeling is better there" according to the travel agent lady....as the day wears on we suspect she steered us North because the driver of the boat also had half a dozen large bags of ice to deliver in that direction.

Just out of the harbor we pass through a very narrow strait between two almost vertical rock faces that even overhang the boat. In the distance we see monument valley like rock towers jutting from the sea. It's a very loud and very scenic one-hour ride to Koh Bulon. The captain beaches the boat and we set off. He'll be back in two hours "at one" to pick us up.

We walk along the beautiful white sand beach, lined with palm trees, some bungalows with muzungu's and take a swim in the shallow, clear warm water. Afterwards, we eat a very nice lunch at the resort restaurant; they have some great sandwiches with good bread. Another swim and then we wait for our ride back and hope we recognize him. We see his boat, but he goes around the corner of the island then comes back to look for us. We guess we were supposed to meet him somewhere else.

We head back the way we came and stop at a small island for some snorkeling. Rachel's mask strap is rotten and breaks immediately. She isn't too distressed about that; she had tried snorkeling in New Zealand and just couldn't "look under water and breathe". Patrick goes overboard and snorkels for a while, but it isn't much fun alone. Because of the low tide we cannot beach on the small islands. So, we just stay offshore and snap some pictures. Clouds have moved in, we get a brief downpour and the water becomes choppier. At 2:30pm we're back at the Pak Bara pier. It's an interesting reverse climb over several moored longboats, up a steel ladder onto the concrete pier. We get up back onshore just before another downpour hits.

In the evening we eat more pad thai with shrimp, do some internet and watch more Bond movies. There's a Bond marathon going on.

We hope we recognize him when he comes to pick us up

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