The Tide Ain't High, but I'm Holding On

It’s great to have sated my curiosity about the madness that is Patong and be back in the sanity and serenity of my hotel’s tranquil grounds, on a relatively sunny clear day. Okay Patong is not that bad, only mildly insane in the scheme of things but anyway, I prefer this: Just like Otis, sitting and watching the tide roll away.

I love the tidal nature of the beaches here, again for nostalgic reasons. Watching the locals wading about the rocks and the distant water at low tide  evokes strong memories of walking along the low tide beach at Bedok and Pulau Ubin in Singapore, family outing destinations in the more halcyon days, before any parental downward spiral had occurred.  Or perhaps just paradisical recollections to my innocent 3-5 year old self.

It fascinated me that the water could recede so far out, so quickly, and that small, gasping fish and scurrying crabs were left behind to writhe asthmatically in the mud, while tiny bivalves beat a hasty retreat underground. Seemingly ancient, toothless women wearing pointy Chinaman hats, rickety- legged, their stooped bones bent almost double, carried mesh bags and wicker baskets in which to stash the accumulated spoils of their rummaging and foraging in the slimy, slick treasure trove of the ocean.

I remember  my brother and I walking out for what seemed like miles with my Dad or my Mum or both, away from solid land and out towards the even deeper mysteries of the Strait separating Singapore from Malaysia. Then walking back again, when the waters threatened their return by stealth.

At this beach in Southern Thailand, the tidal pattern is almost perfect. It is highest any time between 9:30am and 11am, right after breakfast. This is the time when people descend to the beach to swim and sunbake.  The hotel has gone from being a ghostly shell to buzzing with large Asian family groups from Malaysia taking up residence in the beachside bungalows, perhaps availing themselves of the marvellous low season specials advertised on Agoda in a bid to fill the place. There seem to be  a lot of teenage girls, who giggle as they run away from the mild waves that lick at their hoiked- skirted ankles. I don’t know why many Asian guests dispense with bathing costumes, remain fully clothed, only rolling up their trousers and venturing in up their ankles.  I’ve only seen one woman so far, conspicuous by her atypical choice of a skimpy bikini.

So now, heading towards the other end of the complex is futile. My ‘private’ palm shelter is usually already occupied as are  the other tables. My solution is to position myself closer to the pool bar end of the place, on a beach towel on the grass near the beach, under a shady tree. Today I spent a pleasant few hours bathing up to my knees, playing a new song on my ukulele, dozing and planning future sorties to other parts of the islands.

By 2pm or so, the tide is well and truly back out, and the sandy breakers near the shore make way for a vista of rocks and seaweed as the water heads  out to sea a hundred metres or more. Most people have dispersed into town or off on treks, or into the lagoon pool, so I stand more of a chance by the afternoon of taking up my preferred position at the quiet end of the beach. Just me, my diary, a riveting read, and my ukulele.

The friendly, uniformly statuesque German extended family with the cute one year old, improbably called Shirley, shares a rowdy breakfast in the restaurant, followed by a daily routine of setting up their banana  loungers on the grassy kerb  of the beach. They have the red-skinned look of zealous tanners who, unlike myself, do not come from a place entirely bereft of ozone. They do not worry about the perils of daily exposure to menacing UV rays. And so they wonder around all day, unencumbered and untroubled by the old ‘slip slop slap slurp’ mantra (shirt, sunscreen, hat, water bottle) with which we Perthies have been programmed since time immemorial. Well, since at least the late seventies, anyway.

I gravitate towards the beach one evening, to enjoy the cool sea breeze and inspect the state of the tide. It’s quite the loveliest time to be there, when the sky is open and the veil of day time cloud lifted from the shy face of a Muslim moon. The overhead lamps from the resort's lagoon pool area create a bleached, Sugar Mountain, luna sandscape. 

I watch a hermit crab limping drunkenly in its vaguely north-south, careening pilgrimage across the this luna landscape of the giants. We play a kind of Aesopean game, my hare to its tortoise: I stop so many times to admire the view that I am convinced its determined slow and steadiness will beat me to the finish line.

By the time I reach the jetty end of the beach, with its prowling all-night security guard defending the border between Thavorn and the time share resort next door, it is dark. A recently-murdered coconut palm carcass sprawls on the sand, barely recognizable.

On the way back to my room, I pass by the Thai restaurant Old Siam, to which a wedding party has fled , and  The Dream Team’s conspicuous  absence from their nightly ambient music session in the main restaurant is explained. I watched the service staff spending hours preparing for an outdoor reception, only to have to snatched away by the moody monsoon.

The tsunami of 2004 gave Nakalay beach a walloping but, I am assured, no one was killed. The absolute beach front cottages and one of the restaurants were all swept away, and have since been recently built in what I consider to be a blandly modern style. As one section of villas is only accessible by cable car, due to their location up an almost vertical incline (which however rewards their occupants with magnificent views), all staff and guests were able to escape to higher ground during the emergency. I try to imagine the sight of the water being sucked out past the point of visibility, everyone scurrying by whatever means to the safe hilltops. According to Victor the Pilipino  from the house band, the hero of the day was the captain of a Chinese junk that used to moor off the jetty at the south end of the beach, who saw what was happening and managed to remove his craft safely out to sea, and to warn the hotel of the impending deluge.

Low-lying Patong itself, really only a stone’s throw away as the crow flies, and visible from this bay, (but actually a longer and more circuitous journey by land due to the hills, the rocky coastline and the cliffs) was not so lucky. There are signs all along the foreshore warning that it is a potential tsunami zone and advising people in both Thai and English to flee to a high point, should another one occur.

Even in the bog standard monsoonal rain, some of the streets of downtown Patong were like a version of Venice when I went in on the shuttle on Tuesday, the tuktuk drivers like so many gondoliers, trying desperately to navigate the sudden, milky deluge. Roadside vendors selling flimsy, barely- effective, multi-coloured plastic ponchos to tourists were making a killing.