To Thailand

When my long night in Suvarnabuhmi airport finally drew to an end, I took a short (one hour) flight to Phuket and then a taxi to Patong Beach to meet the rellies. This was my first exposure to Thai driving and is best left to the imagination. Patong Beach is a pretty dreadful place, reminiscent of Benelmadena or some such place in the south of Spain and the hotel was equally grotty so I was thankful to be only spending just over twenty four hours there.



On Saturday 3rd, we received a very warm welcome at the Sunsail base and picked up our home for the next week. Princess Christina is a Sunsail Odyssey 35, built by Jeanneau in France to Sunsail’s specs and so is custom built for charter use (which means, among other things, a smaller headsail than normal). We were given a very thorough briefing on the area and the possible anchorages and overnight stops before a somewhat manic visit to the local enormous Tesco Lotus where we charged around trying to identify what various items were before buying them.

We left the marina on the east side of Phuket later that afternoon and spent our first night at a rather rolly anchorage on an island east of Phuket. Dinner was in a lovely small beachside restaurant and cost the grand total of about Bht2,000 (3 starters, 5 main courses and a few beers) - that’s less than €50. From there, we started by heading north to spend a couple of days sailing in and around some of the amazing soaring limestone islands that plunge vertically out of the sea. Some of these islands have “hongs”, which are lakes or lagoons in the centre of the islands. Some of these hongs can be reached by a narrow passage in a dinghy at certain stages of the tide, others by swimming or crawling through tunnels but they are all spectacular in an eerie sort of way. One of the islands we visited in the first couple of days is known locally as “James Bond Island”, as it was used in The Man with the Golden Gun. It is now a major daytripper destination with lots of souvenir stalls selling the usual tourist tat.

As we made our way south during the week, we had spectacularly good weather, clean water, great food and even managed to teach the junior crew some of the basics of sailing. One of our concerns at the outset was that a week aboard might prove to be a little too long for a seven and a ten year old but that proved completely unfounded as the week was filled with new experiences - snorkelling for the first time (outside your bath, that is) in crystal clear water with hundreds of reef fish probably topped the list. Going ashore to different restaurants in a dinghy very night, being stung (very slightly on the bum) by jellyfish, jumping off the pulpit of the boat (the rail at the front) into the water in your armbands - all made the week a very memorable one and a great success.














Everywhere you go on the water in Thailand, you will see one type of boat operating - these are called longtails. They are of timber construction with a high prow, usually about twenty five feet long but their most amazing part is the engine. These are enormous petrol or diesel engines, often a V6 or V8 mounted on a pivot at the stern of the boat with a long propellor shaft sticking out the back which gives them their name. The engines are very heavy and require a huge amount of physical force to pivot them to turn the boat so being a longtail skipper is not for the weak of limb. They are used for everything from passenger and goods transport to fishing.

When we reluctantly returned to the Sunsail base, we then had an interesting four hour minibus (and ferry) transfer from Ko Phuket to the island of Ko Lanta, where we are staying in a lovely beachside resort with individual bungalows for the next nine days.

First impressions as I write this on the morning of day one are excellent ! The cocktail list is extensive and breakfast was ok.

Speaking of On the Beach, as it were: Ruth from Toronto has given me some more information about Neville Shute. Apparently, he was English and not Australian but attended Oxford with Ruth’s father-in-law. Another interesting fact about him that she provides is that “his father was head of the Post Office in Dublin and that Neville was a stretcher bearer there in 1916”.

Thanks Ruth !