Emperor Island, Thailand: A Royal Secret in the Gulf of Siam

While the wake of speedboats still lingers around Phuket, the coral reefs of Emperor Island, 12 nautical miles away, are already awakening. This island, known as "ราชา (Racha)" in Thai, has held a royal ecological secret since the 1960s when it became King Bhumibol Adulyadej's summer palace. Century-old Indian almond trees on the east coast bear sterling silver plaques, commemorating the red mangrove saplings planted by Queen Sirikit in 1972, which now form a migratory channel sheltering young fish. The coral gardens at dawn are a diver's paradise. Sunlight from 7 degrees north latitude penetrates the 3-meter shallows, transforming staghorn coral into a neon jungle. Underwater, off the east coast's "King's Cliff," lies a coral restoration project from the 1980s undertaken by the Royal Thai Marine Corps. Decommissioned tanks, now artificial reefs, house families of clownfish within their gun barrels. Local dive guide Anan's grandfather, a former royal island guardian, recalls the 1965 visit of the Crown Prince, who, on his first dive, tied a golden prayer ribbon to a shipwreck, a ribbon now serving as a symbiotic algae bed for giant clams. At noon, the beaches belong to strolling Brahman cattle. Permitted by the royal family to roam freely, their neck bells are engraved with "พระราชา" (Royal). When the resort was developed in 1998, designers embedded motion-sensing lights along the coconut grove paths. As the cattle pass, LED lights embedded in the white sand illuminate, mimicking the moonlit paths of royal processions. Mango Bay, a favorite of the herd, hides shards of 19th-century Siamese merchant ship porcelain within its sands, forming dimples of time alongside the shallow hoofprints. The evening tides follow the royal calendar. Every day at 6:15 pm, as the last rays of sun kiss the western "King's Rock," the resort's bronze bell tolls 12 times, marking the hour of King Bhumibol's first arrival in 1960. Beneath the glass floor of the cliff restaurant, the receding tide reveals the wreckage of a Japanese transport ship sunk in 1942, its rusted compass forever pointing towards Bangkok. Chef Ajiang's menu features the "Emerald Coconut King," a dish served to the royal family in 1965. The royal insignia on the coconut shell engages in a curious dialogue across time with the cattle's hoofprints on the beach. After nightfall, ancient Siamese folk songs echo through the rainforest. In island keeper Somchai's bamboo house hangs a silver lantern gifted by the King in 1958. Every Loy Krathong, he rows to the island's central saltwater lake, releasing a replica of the royal lantern. The lake bed, a repository of coins tossed by generations of royals, holds coins as recent as a commemorative piece from King Rama X's 2019 coronation, sharing the silence with terracotta fragments from centuries past. This small island, just 12 square kilometers, has undergone a gentle tourism revolution under a half-century of royal protection. While tourists in Phuket count their baht on Patong Beach, Emperor Island's coral grows at a rate of 1.5 centimeters per year, the cattle bells ring clearer than the roar of jet skis, and the undeveloped western cliffs, forbidden to development by royal decree, still hold the memory of the first light that greeted the King in 1960.