My Thai Story II

by Guy Lilburne

  Although I generally like to keep myself to myself, my social life was getting busy too. I had eventually been talked into playing pool for the Wilkris Resort in the weekly pool league. The owner of the Wilkris is a delightful man called Keith Callaghan. He’s a Canadian and a real gentleman and I always enjoy his company. I still go to his resort to this day to eat, have a few beers or just make use of the swimming pool. Another friend of mine, who is also called Keith (Beckham), owns Kobby’s Kitchen with his Thai wife, Koby. He talked me into trying golf. Again I said no. Well, at first I did, but eventually he talked me into going to the driving range and giving it a go at hitting some balls down the range. Now I had never even held a golf club in my life, so I wasn’t too excited about it. Keith was very kind and gave me all his time and I loved it. I even managed to hit some of the balls that I was swinging at. Some of them went nearly 200 yards, although not in a straight line. There is more to this golf lark than you would think! Another friend called Maurice Birchall took me again a few months later and he too gave me his time, advice and experience. We had a great day which ended with him taking me to a golf shop in Pattaya and me buying a brand new full set of clubs, a very attractive black and yellow golf bag with matching shoes and glove. I could have bought loads of stuff, but just like my fishing gear, I would probably never need it. I always thought that I would hate golf, but it is very addictive, even when you are as bad at it as I am. If you do hit a great shot you can’t stop thinking about it all day. Luckily for me I didn’t hit so many good ones! I persisted with the golf and ended up playing various courses and started playing twice a week. There are a group of us who meet up to play and they are a great bunch of lads. I was always the worst player, but I really liked it and slowly but surely I was getting better…..who knows I might even par a hole one day!

  One of my best friends in Bang Saray was Les. He was my next door neighbour. Well, he lived in a house on the next pier to me and we could shout to each other across 30 ft of water from our balconies. Sometimes we would just go round to each other’s house to make the conversations easier. Les was a retired dentist, but he had done so much more in his life - but he probably wouldn’t want me to write about it in a book! Les was a very complex character and we chatted about all sorts of things. I really enjoyed his company. He was married to a lovely Thai girl called Nikki and lived on the pier with her and her young daughter. Les had two great passions in life - golf and boats. He had a big racing Catamaran moored outside his house. He had got it cheap because it was past its best and needed a lot of attention. Les worked on the boat nearly every day and kept me updated about its progress and seaworthiness. I found myself agreeing to go on its maiden voyage with him when it was ready. We talked about sailing around some of the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Les had had boats before and sailed around the Caribbean. He also had a pilot’s licence for small fixed wing planes, so I was confident in his ability as a skipper. I liked hearing his stories about his previous exploits on the high seas and I was looking forward to our planned sail. It would be an adventure and Les was good company. He also had a small boat which we would often use after dark to sail out a little way and catch squid. Les had made a little rig of green lights which we could hang over the side of the boat. We always took a few beers out with us and just relaxed and chatted. We only ever went out for a couple of hours, but we always managed to catch plenty of squid and it was always good fun.

  Chapter 14 - Shipwrecked!

  Not many people can claim to have been shipwrecked and marooned on a desert island. But I can! Okay, the island wasn’t really a desert island. It was Koh Samet. The sign reads - Koh Samet, the paradise island - and there were enough hotels, bars, restaurants, shops and ATM’s for me to survive on the island. Well, that and my natural survival skills of course!

  Les had been working on the boat more and more. His friend had arrived from up north to help him. He called his friend ‘The Professor’. Basically it was because he looked like one - always wearing his tinted prescription glasses on the end of his nose. And he had his own explanation for everything that had ever happened in the world. He was a long term resident of Thailand and had run bars in Pattaya for over 10 years. He had had two long term relationships with Thai women that failed and he lost everything. His latest relationship had just hit the rocks. (I should have taken that as an omen!). He lost everything that he had left after he had lost nearly everything when his first long term relationship had failed! He smiled a lot and was a nice looking man for his age. He was good company and I liked him. Les had introduced us when he arrived to stay at Les’s house. Each day he shouted out a hello and waved, then spent most of each day working on the boat with Les. I was busy writing, but I could hear their laughter and chatter as they worked on the boat while I sat on my balcony typing my latest book. It was a Thursday morning when Les came to see me.

  “The boat’s ready,” he said in his thick Geordie accent. “Well almost, but ready enough to sail. We are leaving in two hours. Are you ready?”

  “Wow! Thanks for the long notice Les. Where are we going?”

  “I thought about sailing to Koh Samet. I reckon it’s about a six hour sail. We can stay on the island for the night and sail back tomorrow.”

  “Okay. In two hours then?”

  “Yes. We have to sail then or we will miss the tide.”

  “Okay. I’ll go and get some beers and provisions.”

  “Up to you mate. I have some beers and water.”

  “I’ll pack a bag and get some stuff anyway. See you in two hours.”

  “We can’t wait or we’ll miss the tide. If you aren’t here then we’ll have to go without you, but I’d really like you to come Guy.”

  “I’ll be there, Captain.”

  Les couldn’t hide his grin. I think he liked the title.

  I was already showered, so I just packed a rucksack with some fresh clothes and an overnight toiletry bag, camera, iPhone and iPad. I went to the shop and bought a crate of Chang beers and some bottles of orange juice. I bought two loaves of bread, milk, sugar, tea and coffee. I already had kilo packs of frozen sausage, burgers and bacon that I had bought from my friend Jules Lee. (He sells everything!) When I was in the village I also decided to buy two big sea fishing rods and some heavy tackle. I had been deep sea fishing a few months previously with another friend who lived on one of the piers further along the bay. He was a man called Pia and he was from Denmark. He owned a fishing boat and took tourist out deep sea fishing. When he took me along for a day I had caught a Barracuda and another big silver/yellow coloured fish, but nobody knew what it was. Anyway I thought that it might be fun to fish off the back of Les’s boat as we sailed along. We were going across some deep water on the journey to Koh Samet. I made it back just in time with only minutes to spare - Les was already manoeuvring the boat. We loaded up all the stuff that I had bought and, like three excited kids, we set sail out of the bay with Les’s wife waving us off. The local Thai people were looking at us as if we were crazy going to sea in a boat that quite clearly needed more work on it. Les had rigged up a make shift steering system and it seemed to work quite well. The boat was also equipped with an auto pilot satnav system, and a little gas cooker. We had big freezer boxes for the food and beers. We had set out at 10:00am and Les reckoned that it was about a six hour sail, so we should have arrived at about 4:00pm. We were planning to go ashore and have some food and beers and then sleep on the boat before sailing back the next day. We set out with spirits high. The day was just beautiful. Clear blue sky and clear and calm blue water. It was a great feeling to be sailing on the open sea - a real feeling of freedom. I couldn’t help but think how many people all over the world would dream of spending a day like this, and I was actually doing it. It felt like a great adventure. I got to know the Professor better and I liked him even more. He wore his heart on his sleeve and was clearly broken hearted with his last failed r
elationship, but he was hopeful that the right women would come along one day. He was already in his mid-sixties, but love knows no age boundaries I guess!

  We laughed a lot and drank beer a lot and I set up the rods at the back of the boat to see if we could catch anything as we sailed along. Les had used the engine for the first couple of hours but then wanted to sail on the wind. This would have been a great idea if there had been any wind, but there wasn’t. The auto pilot told us that we had decreased speed to just under 5 knots. The Professor and I didn’t question the Captain, but as the hours passed it became more and more obvious that this was going to be a long sail - a lot longer than the six hours that Les had predicted. We were still in the middle of nowhere when it got dark - very dark. We still had to cross a major shipping lane where the big cargo ships entered Rayong harbour. It was a good job that I had brought all the food along because we had all got very hungry. The sausage, burger and beacon sandwiches kept us sustained. I really can’t tell you how great they smelt cooking or how wonderfully delicious they were to eat. We were starving. Les kept recalculating the estimated time of arrival and it kept getting later and later. I watched the stars. The movement of the boat made them appear to dart around in the sky. We didn’t have sufficient lighting on the boat because we didn’t think that we would be sailing in the dark. As we approached the main shipping lanes the Professor got scared, really scared. We could see the silhouette of huge ships, and I mean really huge - like great black monsters of the night sea. They would never see us. That was for sure and we had to sail a course between them to get to where we wanted to go. It wasn’t for the faint hearted. As we picked our way through the hazards the Professor and I stood at each side of the boat waving our lit mobile phones as an extra safety measure. Actually the only safety measure! It was pitch black, just the sound of the sea and the occasional fog horn from one of the big ships. This was turning into a real sailing adventure! As soon as we got through the shipping lane the Professor went to sleep on the deck. He was exhausted, a little bit drunk and a little bit scared. I felt it my duty to stay awake with Les and I kept us both supplied with hot coffee all night.

  The hours dragged by painfully slowly and I was tired. Les could have used the motor and made some good speed but it was important to him to ‘sail on the wind’ even though there wasn’t any. It was his passion and his boat. What could I do! At about 3:00am in the morning, one of the reels on one of the new fishing rods started to scream and run out line. It was something big. I had put big lures on both lines with steel tracers so that no barracuda or any other big predator fish could bite through the line if hooked. We had been sailing for a very long 17 hours and this was the first bite that we had had.

  The Professor woke up with all the noise and excitement. We could see some lights in the distance. It was the island of Koh Samet, but it was still a long way away. We dashed to the back of the boat and I grabbed the rod. It was arched in a big bow and the line was still unreeling. I put the brake on it and started to pull and wind the monster in, but it was pulling back and away as quick as I was reeling it in. After nearly 5 minutes of this battle I was already exhausted. I knew it was the biggest thing I had ever caught. Les took over the rod and battled for several more minutes before handing the rod to the Professor. We kept rotating and slowly but surely we were winning. As it got closer to the boat it kept coming to the surface before diving again. What fantastic sport it was. We couldn’t make out what kind of fish it was in the moonlight. It just looked silver and may have had some blue or black markings, but it was big. Big and heavy. I had the honour of actually landing it. We’d battled for nearly 20 minutes and we had won the battle. Our prize was a Seven Eleven carrier bag. It had caught on the hook and, full of water and dragging behind the boat, it had imitated a monster fish perfectly. It even looked like one in the moonlight. We were disappointed, but then laughed until it hurt - recounting the battle and the comments we had made in our efforts to land the bloody thing.

  I’m ashamed to say that there was a bit of a mutiny then. The Professor and I ganged up on Les and, reluctantly, he started the engine and we started to make some good speed towards our destination. At 4:30am, as we approached the island, we got caught up in some fishing nets and spent some time manoeuvring backwards trying to free ourselves. But we only managed it after Les went overboard with a big knife between his teeth and cut us free. Just before 5:00am we dropped anchor as near as we dared to the beach. We were about 40 or 50 yards out. I cooked the last of the sausage. We ate and then fell asleep on the boat as it was just starting to get light. We were woken by heavy rain at 6:30am. We had only had an hours sleep. The Professor swam to the beach and borrowed a canoe so we could take our belongings on shore. I took the precaution of wrapping my phone, camera and wallet in a plastic bag. We loaded up the canoe with our bags and valuables and swam to shore pulling the loaded canoe along with us. It was all going so well until we were nearly on the beach. The waves there were just too strong, capsized the canoe and washed all our stuff onto the beach. Clothes, towels, bags, everything was soaked. The cameras and phones were dry inside the plastic bags. We made our way up the beach with everything soaking wet and we booked into a cheap chalet resort. It was a backpacker’s sort of place and full of young backpackers. It was only 500 baht a night for the little wooden chalets, but there was nothing in them except a bed, a mosquito net and a fan. The toilets and showers were in a block which everyone shared. At least it was dry land and a proper bed. The six hour sail that Les had promised turned into an epic 19 hour voyage and it hadn’t been without incident.

  It was nice to have a shower, but we didn’t have a dry towel between us. We then had to dress in wet clothes again, but we were happy and already laughing about our sailing adventure. We hung out the rest of the wet clothes to dry and we wandered off along the island to have a cooked breakfast with some beers and just enjoy the day. The rain had stopped and it was bright and sunny and hot again. The clothes we were wearing dried as we walked along. After a few hours we went back to the chalets to sleep. It was hot and humid in the little wooden chalets, but sleep soon came and I didn’t wake up until late afternoon. I put a towel around me and decided to go down to the shower block and freshen up. In the chalet next to me was a young Swedish couple, probably in their early to mid-twenties. They were also wrapped in towels having just returned from the shower block. They were friendly enough and said hello. They obviously wanted to chat, but I just wanted to go and have a shower. I wasn’t interested in swapping life stories. The young man then whipped off his towel and started drying himself, naked for all to see! I decided to stay and swap life stories in the hope that his girlfriend would do the same. But she didn’t, so I made my excuses and went to shower.

  We went out to a restaurant in the evening and then sat at one of the bars to enjoy a few cold beers. At about 10:00pm an old Thai lady came into the bar to find us. She had watched us swim to the shore early that morning. She spoke to Les;

  “You have big boat?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You come quick. Boat have big problem. Big rocks.”

  Les shouted to the lady behind the bar that we had to dash down to the beach, but we would be back to pay the bill. The old Thai lady said the same in Thai and we dashed out. We were followed by a few of the bar girls, locals and tourists, who decided to come and watch the drama. A few minutes later we were on the beach. A storm had blown in and the waves were big and had washed the boat off its anchorage. It was now only about 15 feet away from some big rocks that were a feature on that part of the beach and it was being washed towards them fast. We waded in and tried to push the boat away, but the waves were high and strong. The people who had followed us down to the beach waded in behind us to try to help. People watching from other bars also dashed down to help. Bar girls waded in, their short dresses lifted up above their pants by the water. Their dresses washed off their shoulders by the
waves. Everyone was getting soaked by big waves that washed over us all. We were trying to push the boat back out over the waves, but Les wanted to push it further along the beach to where there were no rocks. There was a window of opportunity when we could have saved the boat. With all the hands helping we had managed to push it out over the big swell of waves. We all shouted at Les to get on the boat and start the engine and take it out to safer waters, but he just wouldn’t and continued trying to push the boat along the beach instead of out from the beach. There was a strong undercurrent and the waves were just too powerful. People, already exhausted got tired of trying to help and one by one they dropped off. The waves pushed the boat back towards the rocks and, as it got too close for everyone’s safety, they moved away and went onto the sandy beach to watch the final moments. The boat smashed against the rocks, then again and again. We couldn’t push it off. One of the hulls ripped open and the sea water poured in. It sank down into the water on one side and huge waves then washed over it. It is surprising how quickly a boat falls apart when it starts to go. It gave up the fight and the waves washed over it washing away everything that was still on board, including my new fishing rods. We sat on the sand and watched it breaking up. All Les’s hard work was being destroyed in front of his eyes. He couldn’t watch anymore and we went back to the bar.