Escape from the Island

Celias View----- The Sanctuary Ko Phagnan, Thailand.

In the middle of the night on the 5th of December, I woke up to the sound of rain pounding down on our bungalow roof. Curt and I had a hurried, whispered conversation about whether or not it would pass in time for us to leave by canoe the next morning on our way to catch connecting flights to India. We decided it was just a passing storm and would definitely clear up before morning. After all hadn’t the weather been absolutely picture perfect up until then?

How wrong could we have been!

We awoke in the morning to flooding throughout the whole Sanctuary. We had to wade to the restaurant, the rain wasn’t stopping and the sea was so rough that all taxi boats between Hat Thien where we were and Hat Rin had stopped running.
This was extremely bad news for us as we had a flight the next day from Ko Sumai which we had to make in order to make our international flights. There was a small chance we could wait till the next morning and still make it but the weather forecast was predicted the storm would last a whole week as it was the tail end of the cyclone in the Philippines

Two other girls we had been hanging out with, Nat and Mel were in the same position as us, having to make a 10:30 flight from Koh Sumai that day.

We started making enquires about how else to leave a place that is connected by road and were told two Thai guys would act as guys to take us two hours by jungle over the mountain to Hat Rin. We were completely dismayed by the prospect of trekking up a huge mountain with packs in torrential conditions but were resigning ourselves to the prospect when the owner of the sanctuary started talking to Curt on the beach.
They shared a quick spliff and the owner suggested we might be able to reach Ko Sumai by speed boat.

This idea quickly grew and soon the four of us had decided to split the cost of chartering a boat (about 5000 Baht or $150 Aus) and go for it. The owner swore the Thai guy he was calling from another beach wouldn’t take the boat of across if he didn’t think he could make the crossing and we decided to cross our fingers and do it.

There was no way under the storm conditions the boat could reach shore so we found ourselves with our bags wrapped in garbage bags, on the beach clinging to the side of a rubber dingy with a motor attached.
We were going to have to ride the waves to the boat.

The whole of the Sanctuary came out to watch us depart from the restaurant and with the three girls roped into the dingy, Curt and two Thai guys pushed us into the sea. We went straight under a massive wave, everything soaked and the Thai guy hanging of the side only half in. We grabbed him, got over the next two waves and finally sat up. We looked back and all the Sanctuary were cheering!

After that we finally made it to the speedboat for an extremely scary crossing, huge waves kept flipping the boat and I went quite pale and started thinking about death as well as crushing curts hand which had bruises by the time we made it.
Finally though all four of us were at mine and Curt’s hotel, wrapped up in robes, after lovely hot showers, getting ready to order room service and bum out to some movies!