If you visit near sunset, you g et the light coming in the mouth of the cave as you swim back along

Koh Mook / Muk (เกาะมุกด์) is a fairly large island just off the South West coast of Thailand. It is accessed via the mainland town of Trang and is regarded as one of the ‘Trang Islands’. Mook is not on the main farang tourist trail because weekend travel deals cheap there are more beautiful beaches on other, more touristic, islands weekend travel deals cheap nearby.
There is water-filled cave/tunnel on the West coast which is a stop-off on most tourist boat trips. Tourists in floatation vests hold onto a rope while a tour-guide tows them through the 100m tunnel to reach an enclosed beach inside the body of the island.
Koh Mook is not known for its snorkelling, but I had seen a few maps mentioning snorkelling sites there, so I wanted to check it out. Most of the off-the-beach snorkelling is poor, but I did find some patches of gorgeous fan corals, a large patch of beautiful purple porites hard coral, a few interesting fish species and some cool looking jellyfish. Unfortunately, these were all about 2 hours swim from beach access.
It is possible to rent kayaks from a few resorts on Charlie Beach, so you could pack a mask and snorkel and go exploring by kayak. Also, during high season, weekend travel deals cheap you can charter longtail boats for about 1000B to go on snorkelling/cave-visit weekend travel deals cheap trips.
weekend travel deals cheap I visited in May (2012) at the end of the dry season. weekend travel deals cheap Weather was variable – sometimes calm and sunny, some days rainstorms and 1.5m swells. Underwater visibility wasn’t spectacular – about5- 6 metres.
This map is from Hat Farang Bungalows. I’m using their map because it identifies three ‘snorkelling areas’ off the West coast. I stayed at Hat Farang Bungalows weekend travel deals cheap – they have a wide range of decent accommodation and a great restaurant, weekend travel deals cheap all about 200m from Charlie Beach.  Kudos to them and their map.
I have extracted the West coast and flipped it upside-down, so it looks like it would if you were stepping off Charlie weekend travel deals cheap Beach into the sea. That means that North is now off to the right. The letters on the map refer to the commentary below.
The right (North) edge of Charlie Beach is all rock. It takes the form of shallow ridges  – that’s from layers of sedimentary rock which have been turned up on-end weekend travel deals cheap by some ancient tectonic activity, right? I’m no geologist. weekend travel deals cheap At low tide you will see the locals walking through the rock pools looking for some free food, trapped there when the tide went out.
As you get further out to the corner of the bay, it becomes sandy bottom 80% covered with big boulders and (mostly-dead) weekend travel deals cheap hump coral. weekend travel deals cheap It’s not too exciting here, but there are some small patches of colourful brain and finger corals; a few clams, plus the occasional large shoal of scavenging parrotfish.
As you continue heading to the right, you are into what the map calls a ‘snorkelling area’. This is really just a continuation of what we have just seen 80% rock and brown hump-coral. The coral is in better condition round here and there are a few more fish. Among the scavengers, I saw a bannerfish and some white collared butterflyfish.
The ‘snorkelling area’ bay is pretty big it would take 40+ minutes of fast swimming to get from end to end. The best stuff was at the far end (Area C) , underneath the imposing cliffs. Here, I found a big (10m x 15m) patch of purple porites weekend travel deals cheap bracket coral at about 4 metres depth. I love this stuff.
Area C is over an hour’s swim from Charlie beach. Hardly “off the beach” snorkelling and not at all suitable for kids or noobs. A possible alternative for getting there is to hike over the hill. But be warned – it still won’t be easy-going.
There are a network of narrow tracks over the hill at the back of Sawasadee Resort and behind areas ABC. The paths are used by rubber farmers to collect the resin from the numerous rubber trees. weekend travel deals cheap Because there are hundreds weekend travel deals cheap of trees and, as you only have to visit the trees infrequently, there are dozens of tracks but none of them are very well established. You will still have to beat your way through weekend travel deals cheap some forest, so expect to get your legs and feet scratched up, unless you are suitably clothed. The worst patch is when you get past the end of the rubber trees and want to find your way back down to sea-level. There are no tracks here and the going is pretty rough. If you get to the bottom, there is a deserted rocky/sandy beach here. You can safely leave your sweaty clothes on the beach while you go in for a snork, weekend travel deals cheap as the only people who could trouble them are kleptomaniac kayakers.
Entry into the water here is pretty difficult. You will have to step/shuffle over small rocks in the surf which are quite sharp and barnacle-encrusted. It should weekend travel deals cheap be fine as long as there are no waves, otherwise weekend travel deals cheap you will have to go very carefully and certainly have something weekend travel deals cheap on your feet.
Around the corner to the right is the famous Morakot (Emerald) cave. It’s about another hour’s swim through jellyfish-infested weekend travel deals cheap waters. So I’m not recommending you do it. Everything that follows is for kayakers.
There is a sign at its entrance, but if you arrive in the dry season it will be identified by about 6 huge day-trip boats moored up outside and a million people in florescent lifejackets floating around the entrance, waiting weekend travel deals cheap to get back on their boats .
I read that there are also hawker boats that cook sell food to the tourist boats. This leads to food scraps being thrown overboard and a population of scavenging fish hanging around here waiting for easy food.
I have been here on day-boats before, but this time I came at low season, when there was not a tourist boat in sight. Even though there was no food coming, there were big shoals of fish playing around near some rock ledges near the cave.
Tourist boats only come here at low tide. Daytrips will shuffle their schedules around, going to other locations when it is high tide and moving their stop at Morakot for later-on, when the water has gone down and there is more headroom.
I came out here a few times in May and actually, safety has got more to do with the amount of swell (rise-and-fall of the sea water/waves) than it does the position of the tide. Tide is still a factor you probably wouldn’t get in at the top of high-tide ; but in calm seas, you wouldn’t have too much trouble getting in at low to 3/4 tides. BUT if you have half metre swells, that makes for a much scarier proposition. Even at lower tides, you don’t want to be pleading with a million tonnes of seawater that is trying to turn the top of your head into part of the ceiling decorations. Add in the pitch–darkness and to the fact that the waves and wind echo around a couple of dead-end bell chambers, singing “I’M GONNA KIIIIIILL YOOOUUU”, and you will have the (sensible) feeling to put-it-off until another day when the sea is flatter.
If you are going on a tourist boat, you won’t have to worry about any such things – they will only let you in when it is safe and you will probably wear a life-vest and go in accompanied weekend travel deals cheap by a guide holding a torch/flashlight.
The lowest point of the roof is at the main entrance to the cave. If you can swim under/around the chunk of rock with the white layer running through it , you should be fine for the rest of the journey.
The tunnel weekend travel deals cheap then bears round to the right, away from the sunlight in the entrance hall, so after about 30m everything goes completely pitch black. Completely pitch black. This is pretty weekend travel deals cheap scary if you are unaccompanied, but don’t worry as it only lasts about 20 metres. After that, the tunnel starts to curve to the left again and you get a little light from the other end of the tunnel. Not direct light from the outside, mind you. Just some dim, indirect light reflected off a distant wall. It doesn’t weekend travel deals cheap light the tunnel up, but it does trace out the arch of a bend at the far end, so you know where to head-for.
The tunnel is about 3 metres wide. It’s too deep to stand in the middle, but towards the edges you can touch rocks on the bottom. The roof is about 5 metres high here and the walls are pretty much vertical, so if you go slowly, you should be fine.
If you visit near sunset, you g et the light coming in the mouth of the cave as you swim back along the tunnel. Don’t leave it too late in the day – it will take 2 hours to swim back to Charlie beach.
Underwater, there is not much to see (not least because it is dark!). In the entrance hall, it is mostly sandy bottom at about 2 m. Unsurprisingly, the walls of the cave continue underwater down to the ‘bottom’ at 2 metres. weekend travel deals cheap Outside the cave, the cliff continues down a few metres, shelves for a bit then continues down to about 10m.
Underwater, the bottom is mostly just craggy sloping rocks down to a rocky/sandy bottom at 10m , but occasionally there is a huge chunk of rock sticking up from the bottom, providing shelter from the currents for those wanting weekend travel deals cheap shelter and surging upswells for those who want to feed from it.
There was a community of baby fish (not sure what they were, possibly Jacks) that hid behind this fella for protection and/or shade. They were pretty timid – when I was closer then 2 metres they always stayed on the opposite side of the jellyfish. weekend travel deals cheap If I backed off, they seemed to relax and then they stayed directly underneath him, out of the hot sun.
Sabaay bay is a big triangular affair. weekend travel deals cheap Roughly equilateral, with each side about 300m long. Most of the bottom is plain boring sand, about 8m deep at the mouth and sloping up gradually weekend travel deals cheap to flat shallows around the small beach. weekend travel deals cheap The snorkelling is best at the foot of the cliffs near the mouth of the bay on both sides.
The water gets shallow pretty early-on as you approach the beach and there are several big rocks to stub your toe on as you walk up the sandy seabed. Up top, the setting is beautiful – a remote white sand beach surrounded by towering cliffs and raw forest weekend travel deals cheap with monitor lizards scurrying off into the bush and sea-eagles soaring overhead. weekend travel deals cheap The problem (ignoring the three hour swim) is that West-coast beaches get heaps of plastic garbage washing-up. Sabaay Bay is the perfect triangular shape to take three beachworths of crap and to sq