I’m in a rainbow-coloured longboat in Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay, delicately threading through a mangrove maze towards the horizon. In the distance, the jagged outlines of limestone islands form fanciful shapes, jutting like broken glass from bottle-green waters.

“Chicken rock,” says Joom Bourbeit, a guide from The Sarojin resort, which arranged our daylong tour, as she nods towards a distinctive outcropping just ahead. It is indeed an uncanny likeness of a roosting hen, an impression which may, I admit, be enhanced by the sweating can of Thai Singha beer which I cracked open at 10am, rationalising that it was cocktail hour somewhere in the world.

To experience one of these isles more intimately, we transfer to a red rubber canoe paddled by a local guide named Pond. He steers us through a low-hanging archway of rock that serves as an “entrance” to Talu Nok Island, introducing us to a labyrinthine world of shallow lagoons populated by fish that can walk on land, strange rocks that seem to melt like candle wax, and claustrophobic tunnels that enclose us like a coffin before opening into soaring cathedrals topped by a robin’s-egg blue sky.

Credit and view full story at Irish Times