Leaving from Ao Nang beach, Poda, Chicken Island, Princess cave.

There is nothing elegant about a long tail boat. You take an old car engine. You attach a long metal bar to the main drive shaft. You screw a propeller onto the end. You bolt it to the back of an old wooden boat. You stick it in the water and you turn it on. They never go as fast as they do in the movies. James Bond would be long gone. "Chaa, Chaa" as the Thai say, "Slowly, Slowly."

We snorkeled on an ismuth between two islands. The coral was filled with painted fish and clams with giant purple lips. We swam between two massive limestone outcroppings, riddled with caves and covered with green brush. On Poda we lunched under palm trees then walked to the far side of the island.
"Take a picture of me." I asked Victoria. I left my things on the shore and posed in the surf. A bull monkey slipped down from a tree and started going through the pockets of my shorts.
"Hey!" I yelled. His surprised look reminded me of Moe of The Three Stooges. He retreated. I grabbed my pants and he made a run at me with fangs bared. Victoria and I took off down the beach laughing.
"I don't know if it get's any better than this." I said later as we walked along the beach. "I have to keep revising my standard of Paradise, but I can't imagine topping this. This really has to be as good as it gets."

The clouds were painted on the horizon by Dutch masters. Not a single one above us all day. Then the winds picked up. The rain would soon follow. They are brother and sister. I looked at the rising waves from the leeward side of the longtail boat. The medical student from Holland asked me.
"Why don't you take any pictures?"
"I don't like to."
"But your missing all of this spectacular beauty."
"It diminishes the experience." She seemed vaguely interested so I went on.
"You start out with a memory and then you take a picture and then before you know it you only have a memory of looking at a picture. You take a picture and what? You click. When you write you have to really think about it, because it's tricky."
She arched an eyebrow. She was just hanging in there so I went for it.
"See, I can't write "This is the most amazingly, beautiful bay I have ever seen in my life. It's what's called a glittering generality, it says nothing. So I have to look at the scenery, like at that island over there and say, see how it goes in around the bottom? I would write something like 'The massive rock seemed to float impossibly on the turquoise sea' and then I remember it forever. She thought about it for a moment as the boat churned the ocean waves. The motor chugged.
"The sandy ismuth that stretched between the towering rocks was as warm and white as mothers milk." She offered.
"It rose from the ocean like a giant green haired lizard." I countered.
"Like the back of a craggy dinosaur the island chain jutted from the green depths."
"Or see that one with the gigantic chunk lying on the beach, it's like they forgot a piece, or it didn't fit in or it was left over or something."
"Yeah, Yeah."
"See with photography, there is no poetry.