It would be a crime not to check out the little visited islands of Thailand’s Global Geopark, writes Graeme Green. And yet, once, criminals were exiled there.
Acluster of mysterious standing stones loomed ahead. There are more than a few striking differences between this henge out in the Andaman Sea, near the Thai island Koh Lipe, and Stonehenge, England’s famous prehistoric monument.
For a start, these granite pinnacles are
18 metres beneath the ocean surface, coated in white and purple soft corals, and surrounded by thousands of golden damselfish and bigeye snapper. There are no coaches full of underwhelmed tourists by the side of the motorway, either. In fact, there was no one apart from my dive instructor and me.
It’s not just crowd-free under the water; Thailand’s off-the-radar, south-west corner of Satun, on the border with Malaysia, receives few international travellers, a fraction of the hordes that hit Bangkok, Phuket and Koh Samui each year. If you know where to look, you can even get a paradise-like Thai beach all to yourself.
But Satun’s anonymity might be changing. Sprawling four districts of Satun province, it was recently awarded ‘‘Global Geopark’’ status by Unesco, having been marked out as an area with geological heritage that is being protected and used in a sustainable way. There’s evidence of an ancient sea landscape dating back more than 500 million years, with fossils of early organisms, as well as colourful rock formations, mountains, beaches and giant caves.
Locals have embraced their geopark status. We visited Panya Batik on the mainland, a community-run project producing batik textiles featuring trilobites and ammonites, while Muslim women from the region served us khao tom (blue sticky rice), and other treats usually eaten at postRamadan parties. Even our basic hotel on the coast had signs with ‘‘catchy’’ fossil-related room names such as Tentaculite, Stromatolite and Ordovician.
We’d started, though, at Koh Lipe, the tiny island that is Satun’s tourist epicentre, packed with hotels and resorts (not allowed on the other 50 islands within Tarutao National Marine Park), beach bars, and dive shops.
Dropped off by speedboat, we set off one morning from Idyllic Concept, our resort on Sunrise Beach, to hop around the Andaman Islands in a smoke-spitting longtail. Anchored off an empty beach at Koh Adang, we snorkelled over an array of gold, purple and green coral gardens, accompanied by clownfish (of Finding Nemo fame) and neon damsels, while giant clams below waited for something to clamp down on.
At Koh Rawi, we shared the water with puffer fish, bright blue starfish, sea cucumbers, and parrotfish that nibbled at spiky staghorn coral and funnel coral.
Later, we strolled along a beach of smooth black stones on Koh Hin Ngam. I got the feeling they don’t want anyone stealing rocks as souvenirs. A sign warned of ‘‘The Curse of the God of Tarutao