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The Andaman Sea spread out below like a coruscating, inviting mirage, tempting us to sample its warm, estival waters. The plane banked towards the west and descended over a myriad of deceptively small limestone islands jutting vertically, hundreds of feet into the air. A classic tropical karstic landscape of a thousand verdant uninhabited rocks floated like pumice stones on the turquoise ocean and I gaped in childlike awe at the magnificent beauty of the image now burning itself into my memory. We had just jetted down the snaking backbone of Thailand\'s southern provinces, a 500km jaunt from the nation\'s capital, Krungthep Mahanakhon, more familiarly known to the western world as Bangkok. To the east of us the Gulf of Thailand spread its expansive waters to the shores of Vietnam and Cambodia. To the west Myanmar, the Andaman Islands and the Nicobar group heralded themselves as even more exotic locales for future travel. Down below, the refracted vision of Phang Nga Bay loomed larger in the window of the Thai Airways A320 as we descended for our final approach into Phuket airport. This glittering bay and its surrounds are world-renowned for the stark beauty of its towering island limestone monoliths and picture-perfect white-coral beaches; the pin-ups of a thousand, glossy travel magazines. To the west, Phuket Island sheltered the area from the Andaman Sea. To the north and east, Phang Nga and Krabi provinces marked the border with the mainland. And to the south the large Yao group and the hoped-to-be-visited Phi Phi Island, the emerald jewel in the region\'s encrusted natural bijouterie, acted as a gateway to the Strait of Malacca. We landed abruptly on the tropical isle. A few hundred feet more and we would have been sampling the Andaman\'s waters a bit sooner than I had expected. We disembarked the plane, sauntered down the metal staircase, onto the tarmac and into the steaming humid tropical air. We knew full well that for the next couple of weeks the armpits and backs of our t-shirts would make us look like competitors in the Hawaiian Ironman. It was unfortunate, however, that in my current physical state the only tournament I\'d be allowed to compete in, if it existed, would be the flabby couchman. We hitched a 120 baht ride in a minibus driven by one of Phuket\'s superfluous manic drivers. With us for the hair-raising ride was an Arabic couple. The husband was dressed in shorts and t-shirt and a baseball cap. His wife was covered from head to toe in a black burqa. She occasionally glanced over at Renae, quixotically perusing her pastel-coloured airy singlet and Billabong surf shorts. I wondered what she was thinking and whether her look was one of approval, disdain or simple indifference. We got dropped off at Coconut Village. A crumbling, cheap hotel full of nasty décor, it was only a couple of blocks back from Patong Beach, Phuket\'s busiest and, some might say, tackiest tourist mecca. This place was obviously recognisable as a hotel, but its heyday was somewhere in the 1970s. The moog-synthed elevator version of \'Don\'t Cry For Me Argentina\' piped out through the PA system of the hotel lobby. The only visible concession to the international sophisticate was the outdated collection of clocks on the wall displaying the time in London, Tokyo and New York. Unfortunately, however, there wasn\'t an Armani-suited investment banker in sight waiting to check the closing value of the Dow Jones index on the NYSE. This place was for low maintenance tourists like myself, whose only fiscal desire here was for a reasonable trading price on the fake Ray Bans down Patong Beach Road. Soon we were treading the pavements trying to find out for ourselves how much they would cost. Patong Beach is itself a bustling resort town on the southwest coast of Phuket Island. Its west facing sandy plage affords spectacular sunset views over the Andaman Sea. The beach-front road runs for about a straight mile or more and is a continuous throbbing maelstrom of street traders, fake designer stalls, saliva-inducing Thai restaurants and seedy pick-up bars. If you want Nike gear, then no problem, you\'ve come to the right place. Your only uncertainty is whether it\'s real or fake, as the original product is manufactured in Thailand as well. We wandered into the maze of roadside stalls and shops. It was definitely fake-o-rama here. Any product with a label and any intrinsic value sitting in an immaculate store window on Oxford St or Fifth Ave had its bogus doppelganger for sale here. I had first been introduced to this boom business over a decade ago in the shopping nirvanas of Singapore and Hong Kong. While taking a walk down Orchard or Nathan Rd in either city, sooner or later those inimitable words -\'copywatch!\' - would waft past your earlobes in a whispered, I-could-get-arrested-for-this, sort of tone. If you feigned an interest, you\'d be whisked off into a disused part of a building, whereupon a sliding unmarked door would reveal tables full of imitation Rolex, TAG and Gucci watches. We glided in and out of stalls and shops, idly watching the entrancing scene. We picked one of the restaurants, had a fine green curry, then strolled back to the hotel, past all the hustle and bustle of the night time bargaining. It was all a big distraction however, for tomorrow we would be inconsequential minions amongst the giant limestone cliffs of Phang Nga Bay. A decade ago I awoke from a sound sleep, halfway through a 40-hour train journey from Bangkok to Singapore. Something outside was calling me to take a look. The sunlight splattered through the large carriage windows of the couchette on a February morning in 1990, forming fleeting patterns on the musty pleated curtains. I pulled them back and was astonished at the scenery being left in the wake of the train\'s dated rolling stock. I recognised it immediately as karstic. The three years I had just spent studying for a degree at London University were not in vain, although my identification was based on geomorphology, not my chosen field of geology. To quote from the Concise Columbia Encyclopaedia: Karst, barren limestone plateau, W Slovenia, extending c.50 mi (80 km) southeast from the lower SoCa (Isonzo) Valley. Characterized by underground drainage, caves, sinkholes, deep gullies, and other features associated with dissolution and collapse of carbonate rocks, the name has become a generic term used to describe any area where similar landforms occur. This scenery, however, was quite unlike pictures I\'d seen of the Dinaric Alps, where the Karst plateau resides. It had more in common visually with a poster I saw in a travel agent once of the Guilin region of China. I rubbed my eyes and stared out of the window. The landscape was quite flat with rice paddies shimmering like golden ponds in the morning light. Incredibly and impressively, rising out of the sodden farming plains like giant mossy fingers pointing to heaven were countless enormous limestone monoliths, hundreds of feet in height. There was no
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