Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 68
These Porcelain and reef crabs share an anemone.
I could see the ef ects clearly. The clouds of plankton drifted like snow in
the beam of my lamp, their abundance showing up far more clearly than
during the day. Great beds of orange cup corals opened up like fl owers,
waving their tentacles to gather in the small animals and plants as they
swam by.
A few days later I traveled up the Irrawaddy from Myanmar's capital, Yan-
gon, to the charming village of Tawnte. This was fi fteen months before Cyclone
Nargis hit the region in May 2008, killing 150,000 people. On this bright late
January day in 2007 such a disaster seemed unimaginable. Our boat sailed up
a beautiful river, far cleaner than the Ganges to the west or the Mekong to the
