THE TIMING COULD has been better. We have crossed the Pakchan River from Thailand into Burma and there are only five minutes to go before the six o'clock curfew. Our hi-tech inflatable is tied up at the tiny port of Kawthoung where we hand in our passports to the soldiers, who carry antique rifles and whose job is to enforce the evening deadline.
There area a few tense moments as the last supplies are thrown into the boat and the soldiers allow us to pull away from the jetty. For the next two hours we will be heading into the Mergui Archipelago.
"The legendary port of Mergui is the most lovely in all India," wrote the French ambassador to Siam in 1685. "A vast jungle teeming with elephants, unicorns and other wild beasts," said Marco Polo of the region in the 13th century.
There are no unicorns, of course, but the area's endowments still include around 800 uninhabited islands and plenty of wild beasts. Off the southern coast of Burma there are more than 30,000 square km of desert islands with white beaches, dense jungle, clear water and coral reefs. Most are untouched.
The only other humans here are the sea gypsies, an ancient nomadic race. The only other traffic is old fishing boats. This is because for the past 50 years the Burmese Government has kept this area completely closed to foreigners and to most Burmese. Since 1962, the military dictatorship has maintained a nationwide policy of economic and diplomatic isolation. But in the past few years, the policies have changed. Foreign tourists, and of course US dollars, are welcome.
First in have been enterprising tour operators like Graham Frost, the captain of our air-cushioned vessel. Frost and his brother, Adam, run diving and sailing tours out of Phuket, Thailand, called Seal for short. But they always wanted to cross the border and after three years of negotiations and letter-writing, permission to bring foreigners into Mergui was finally granted. "This area used to be like the Wild West," Graham says. "If you wanted to come here, you had to come in with weapons. There was all sorts of stuff going on - illegal logging, fishing, drugs."
So for the first few yacht trips the brothers and their guests were provided with an army escort. The escorts have now been deemed unnecessary and several other dive and charter operations have been given permission to bring in tourists.
This is Seal's first full season of their new sea kayaking trip. So here we are, now more than 120km from Mergui port. We reach the shores of
Wa-Ale Kyun Island, and it's the middle of the night. We are led to a cosy bunch of tents in a clearing just behind a long sandy beach. Tonight the scene is bit by a couple of log fires and candles. The table creaks under its weight of dinner and drinks. It's all very safaris.
During the next two weeks we go kayaking every day. The Seal boats are what they call sit-on-tops. Anyone can use them and we do. There are never any endurance marathons, mainly just gentle paddle around various coastal landmarks. There we do traditional adventure tourism stuff around interesting inlets: explore the beaches or do a spot of snorkeling over some "shark-infested" coral. We also find out that if you get too tired to paddle, the local fisherman will take you several kilometres for two or three cans of lukewarm Coke.
We paddle up the labyrinthine rivers that lead to the centre of
Lampi, which at 90km long is one of the larger islands. Here the mangrove is so tall and thick, it cuts out overhead light. They meander over the murky water, their roots like giant fingers in the sludge. Then we come home to camp for a three-course dinner. It's perfect - not too frontier for comfort but just frontier enough.
