‘Every day is like Sunday, every day is silent and
grey. It’s a seaside town they forgot to
shut down.’
Aow Yai beach, a 3 km gently curving bay, bends its way
around the dense green forest of the inner island, offering a short sandy
doorstep to the Andaman sea. The sea, an
immense expanse of mottled green, white capped turbulence, beats a monsoon
rhythm upon the tireless sand. The heavy
clouds spill oppressively across the sky, shedding rivers of rain onto the sea
and land, and bringing a squall of wind that breathes fiercely onto the shore,
the trees and shrubs bowing frantically to its might. Without the winds bringing the rains in from
the sea, the air is thick and heavy with warmed water. Oppressive heat and humidity cling to the
skin and block the pores.
Behind the curtain of green that hides the lines of beach
huts, there are vibrant forest, home to noises of the jungle. The tinnitus ring of cicadas, tut-tutting of
birds unseen in the trees above, and the click and buzz of exotic insects,
create an ear aching din of nature; and at night the deep rumble of hundreds of
belching frogs, burps loudly into the darkness.
And the darkness is just that, when the moon sits behind the clouds,
there is no adjusting of the eyes to the light, there is no light. Footsteps made into the darkness, along a
path seemingly innocuous during the day, turns into tentative wobble into thick
bushes and complete disorientation.
This is one of Thailand’s quieter islands during the peak
season, and during monsoon it is all but deserted. We are sharing the beach with maybe 20 other
people. And it is nice, with the turbulence of the weather, there is no feeling that we ‘should be doing
something’, there is nothing to do, except watch the waves relentlessly fall
upon the shore and comment on the changes to the ever varying grey of the
brooding clouds.
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