The first thing that is verified when arriving at the Andaman Sea is the emerald color of its waters.
They are warm and placid, not forgetting that in 2004 they rose in a tsunami that devastated Phuket, Phi Phi and so many islands and coasts of southern Thailand and other Indian countries.
What seemed impossible happened.
The sea ate the land.
However, little by little, these places have been recovering their normality, which is none other than the ambition to be corners of the world labeled as paradisiacals.
Although the palm trees as green as the tropical waters always give joy, Phuket does not deceive: it is postulated as the great tourist mecca of the Thai south, with many numbers to compete in the price-quality equation. An affordable corner of paradise that remains. And above, in an hour and a half by boat from Phuket, the small archipelago of the Phi Phi emerges, which is offered as an alternative to a less crowded Eden. On Phi Phi Don, the largest island of the group, there is still room among the
resorts,
although not so much in its port crowded with tourist boats, and more than the local ones - boats called long-tailed because of the peculiar bar that supports their propeller. -.
Phi Phi Lee, the smallest, is uninhabited except for flocks of macaques and blacktip sharks that are easily seen, apart from their dull corals.
Maya Bay, its main attraction, is a cove with a snow-white sand beach, open to an emerald sea and between mounds of dense foliage.
For decades this has been the living picture of the dreamed of tropical paradise.
Guide
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)
announced at the end of March the roadmap to reopen to vaccinated foreign visitors six major tourist provinces of the country: Phuket, Krabi, Phang Nga, Surat Thani (Ko Samui), Chon Buri (Pattaya) and Chiang Mai.
In the first stage, from April to June,
the quarantine for vaccinated foreign tourists is reduced from 14 to 7 days.
In stage 2, from July to September,
Phuket will be the first destination to lift the quarantine requirement.
In the last stage, between the months of October to December,
the other five main tourist destinations in the country will also lift this quarantine requirement.
Throughout this opening process, the visitor will be required to have a negative PCR test done 72 hours before departure.
Thailand Tourism Authority Official Website:
tourismthailand.org
All paradise has a tendency to be lost and only for poets like Milton can it be recovered. The Thai Ministry of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation has prohibited access to Maya Bay. He took the measure in October 2018 to protect the nature of the place, clearly endangered by the avalanche of visitors who wanted to spend a few hours there and take a thousand selfies. The place received the impact caused in the western imagination by the scenes that were filmed there from the movie
The Beach,
starring in 2000 by Leonardo DiCaprio. Based on a novel by Alex Garland that turned the cliché and smoke of paradise seen by backpackers, Maya Bay rose to the top of the list of most idyllic beaches in the world. And, therefore, it was necessary to see it even for a while and, sometimes, it did not fit in its beautiful narrowness. It is not known when the corals of Maya Bay will recover, although the Thai authorities announced last November that they are studying whether to reopen it again in the coming months. There is demand, there is pressure; I mean, no problem.
Now the flow of tourism is turning, especially that of one-day cruises, in Khai, a mini-archipelago in the province of Phang Nga. This group, made up of the small islands Nok, Nak and Nui, tries to supply the dream load of Maya Bay by filling its white beaches and greenish waters where the corals do not complain just because they do not speak.
But those who should protest the most are the terns that nest mostly in Phi Phi Lee. These birds, also called salanganas, produce edible nests that reach $ 2,500 per kilo, ranking at the forefront of the most extravagant delicacies in Chinese cuisine. Since time immemorial, these birds have flown from Siberia to the Indian Ocean in search of the best places to breed. The cliffs and caves of Phi Phi Lee take the cake as the theater of almost heroic procreation. The salanganas first produce with their saliva strands that stick on the rocks and on the roofs of caves that have their entrance by the sea. In Viking Cave - the Tham Phaya Nak cave in Thai - those first white nests are collected by the
chao ley
Nomadic people in older times who now risk their lives climbing bamboo poles and fragile scaffolding to where these swallows nest.
enlarge photo Viking Cave, one of the places where salanganas nest.
Carol Anne Getty Images
Two more harvests
When the men collect that first consignment, the salanganas do not shy away and return to generate other reddish nests, perhaps because of the color of certain algae that they eat more than because of the blood that costs them effort, as a tenacious legend says.
That second crop of nests is also valuable and is taken from them, so that the salanganas produce a third batch of nests already with a lot of impurities, down and small stalks.
They require a lot of cleaning before becoming something you can eat dissolved in chicken soup.
From that third harvest they are left alone to continue their life cycle. While leading restaurants in Asia and other parts of the world offer such a delicacy at astronomical prices, in Phuket Town, the island capital, boxes of all three kinds of nests are sold. And in many areas of Phuket, even supermarkets sell these substances in powders and pills, as food supplements that also have mysterious properties. Fantasy is what flies the most.
In Patong, the beach in Phuket with the most crowded bars, clubs and shopping centers, there is a restaurant called Number Six where people queue in the street to sit on its long benches.
They put local dishes at unbeatable prices.
Among them, something that can be an aperitif or dessert: a swallow's nest syrup.
It is a water with a few strands, like transparent noodles, that are eaten with a Chinese spoon.
It costs 280 bahts (about 9 euros) and it is not bad in the prevailing heat.
Luis Pancorbo
is the author of 'Caviar, gods and oil.
A return to the Caspian Sea… '(Renaissance publishing house).
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