Things that may interest only me: Sun halo

While on the Koh Phi Phi boat trip I saw an amazing natural phenomenon I can only remember seeing once before, a rainbow around the sun.



It's called a halo. I spent nearly 30 seconds researching the phenomenon through google and learned it is a circular rainbow caused by ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. Ice! It was about 147 degrees Celsius in the sun that day and I'm looking at a rainbow caused by ice?

It covered the whole sky, so there was just no way to get a complete photo of it, especially with a crappy camera, without burning out my eyes in the process. I was blown away even further when a perfect second ring formed.



It was a startling, breathtaking sight, but perhaps more surprising was that no one else on the boat cared! I was sitting in the front of the boat with a bunch of drunken Finns. Maybe they drive to work every day with the Aurora Borealis blazing overhead, and that's why they weren't impressed. Or, more likely, they were too drunk to see it or care.

But as for the rest of the people on the boat ... Do these people live in places where dinosaurs roam freely and volcanoes erupt miles into the atmosphere every day? How could you not be impressed by this?

Sheesh.

Koh Phi Phi

Alex Garland's debut novel "The Beach" is a near-masterpiece. It's a ruthless dissection of backpacker culture. In it a group of backpackers finds the perfect beach, a hidden oasis -- paradise. And then proceed to ruin it.

Garland also wrote the screenplay for the movie. The prodigiously talented Leonardo DiCaprio plays the lead role, which was rewritten as an American for him. It was directed by Danny Boyle, who just won an Oscar for directing "Slumdog Millionaire".

So why is the movie so bad?!

In the book the beach is so perfect partly because it's not visible from the ocean. It's can only be reached by an underwater tunnel or by jumping off an inland waterfall.

The filmmakers had to find the perfect beach in Thailand. They chose Maya Cove on Koh Phi Phi Ley. It's pronounced pee-pee-lay.

Go ahead. I'll wait until you're done giggling.

As I understand it no one used the beach until it was rediscovered for the movie. When permission was granted to the filmmakers to use the island there was much criticism.

No one is complaining now that the island is a cash cow. Thanks to the movie, the secret is out. Paradise is Lost. This is the view from my tour boat backing up to the beach.



Half the beach is lined with boats. The other is crammed with tourists.



Bear in mind that there is no accomodation on the island. These people are all here on day trips.

And no wonder. It is a truly magnificent site. The beach isn't completely concealed, as it is in the book, but it is almost completely encircled by limestone cliffs. The water is pristine. This is the view from the beach.



From Maya Cove we traveled up a channel where the water color is a series of startling greens that seem almost unnatural.



We also stopped by Viking Cove. Apparently even Vikings needed a vacation after months of looting and pillaging. (Actually the cave gets its name from paintings of boats inside that are said to look like Viking ships.)



The scaffolding is for harvesters of swallows' nests, which are used in soups and drinks. I ate a bird's nest in Beijing and it's actually worse than it sounds. The nest isn't made from twigs or bark, it's made of hardened strands of saliva.

Mmm ... bird spit.

Collecting birds' nests is a controversial practice because if you steal a bird's nest it can't breed. Thus no baby birds, thus no more bird's nests. Men climb rickety ladders hundreds of feet in the dark to find them. It's dangerous work, but they fetch a ton of money.

We stopped briefly at a surprisingly nice snorkel site, then had lunch on the biggest of the islands, Koh Phi Phi Don, the bigger of the two principal islands. This is where all the tourist infrastructure is.

The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 wiped this island clean. Today it's back at full strength, but in the aftermath of the disaster there was absolutely nothing left.

We sat in the front of the boat with a rowdy group of Finns who were all snotslinging drunk. I wish Americans would just spontaneously break into song when we have a few beers in us. Of course, drunken Finns sing Finnish folk songs. Americans would end up singing Bon Jovi or 50 Cent and the world would hate us even more.



I couldn't pronounce their names so I won't attempt to spell them. The two guys on the right are both in severe pain. Can't you tell?

The guy on the right had one of the worst sunburns I've ever seen. He took his shirt off to go snorkeling and everyone on the boat said "Ooohhh". He looked he fell asleep on the beach. For a month.

The guy in the middle has a scar on his right shoulder from a motorbike accident. His shoulder is broken.

Kippis! (Cheers!)

Saigon, Round Two

I had planned on flying to Buenos Aires the day my friend from the States flew back home, but I decided instead to return to Vietnam. (I had purchased a multi-entry visa with this possibility in mind.)

I only got to see Saigon and Nha Trang on my previous visit here. I want to see more of the country, especially Halong Bay, which is in the north. So I'll take a couple weeks to travel up the coast. From there ... we'll see.

It may be too late to do the two things I most want to do in Argentina: hike in Patagonia and check out the wildlife on Peninsula Valdes. So maybe I'll spend the rest of the trip in Southeast Asia. There's still plenty to see and do here. Plus, it's kinda cool having a tan for the first time in, oh, 15 years!

I had always planned on making Machu Picchu the last major stop on the trip, for sentimental reasons. So I'll probably just do a shortened version of my original planned itinerary for South America. A travel buddy I met in Morocco just moved to Buenos Aires, so it would be foolish to not go.

Ask me tomorrow and I'll have a different plan...

I've decided to set aside tomorrow to get caught up on the blog, email and other computer nerd stuff. I think I have 12 or 15 posts swimming around in my head, so I foresee a long day at the coffee shop...

In the meantime, here's a picture taken from Maya Cove on Koh Phi Phi Leh, the beach used in the crappy movie "The Beach".



The beach itself is maybe 150 meters long. Just to the right of this picture are, oh, about 10,000 tourists. I am exaggerating, but not by much.