Sailing into Adventure on the Andaman Sea (Part 3)
Los Angeles Times (USA, November 8, 1998)

Text by: Yvonne Michie Horn
Photos by: SEAL

Each day included an opportunity for shore exploration. One afternoon we jumped in the zodiac to ride rampaging sea surges in and out of caves wallpapered with colorful lichen and hung with bats. After dinner on another day, we sat around an enormous bonfire of driftwood on shore, built by the boat’s crew to alert the jungle of our presence rather than to add warmth to the already humid night. Tales were shared under an incredibly starred sky; ghost crabs scattered across the sand in the beams of flashlights.

We never saw the elephants, rhinoceros and tigers reputed to be there. A possible reason why came from a book by George Orwell that I pulled from the boat’s library to read while under sail. Titled "Burmese Days", it is based on time Orwell spend in this country in the early part of the century. He describes the Burmese jungle as a "multitudinous rank of trees tangled with bushes and creepers" so dense that a tiger could lurk mere feet away with no one the wiser. Beyond the archipelago’s innocent pristine white sand beaches lay jungle equally dense.

The crystalline blue-green waters around us were more revealing. We identified moon wrasse, parrotfish, goatfish, rabbitfish, leatherjacket, Moorish idol, triton, triggerfish, Oriental sweetlips and several pairs of Emperor angelfish. In one channel a congregation of butterflyfish rode the surge with large schools of tangs, sergeant majors and taitfish. Paddling about with our faces in the waters around Kyun Pila, one of the archipelago’s Great Swinton islands, we floated over stunningly colorful coral – bright blue, purple, green.

The sole diver among us, accompanied by Adam, came back from the depths reporting similar sightings. With one exception: the exhilarating rush of swimming in the company of sharks.

On our last night aboard, Wanderlust’s engine thrummed into action around midnight in order to motor us back to Kawthaung by the next morning. I awoke to find the reclining Buddha smiling down on us in sunlight and the river already noisy with longtails. But this time we could set foot on land. With Mojo doing his best to keep us together, we wandered a town decades had forgotten – a marketplace abundant with fruits and vegetables, inhabitants in Burmese dress shyly curious about the strangers wandering in their midst.

Then it was time to load ourselves and our luggage in a longtail for an earsplitting journey across the river to Thailand. Fast-forward a half century to Bangkok and home.