People often ask me how I ended up here. Running boat trips out of Phuket, going out on the Andaman Sea most days of the week, living on a Thai island when I was supposed to be doing something sensible back in Australia. It’s a fair question. The honest answer is that I fell in love with a place and then got fed up with the way it was being shown to tourists. And I decided to do something about it.
I first came to Phuket as a tourist, like everyone else. I don’t remember exactly what I expected — something like the photos, probably. What I found was significantly better. The sea here is a colour that I’d assumed only existed in postcards. The islands in Phang Nga Bay look like they’ve been arranged by someone with a very good eye. The warmth of the people, the food, the general pace of life — I kept extending my trip. And then I kept coming back. And then one day I realised I wasn’t really going back.
I learned the waters. Started to really understand the tides, the seasons, the routes that the big operators didn’t take because they weren’t fast or efficient enough for a 70-person boat. I knew where the reef was undisturbed at 8am on a Tuesday. I knew which bay in Phang Nga went completely quiet in the late afternoon and turned golden in a way that would make a photographer weep.
Back in those early days, I used to take trips as a tourist. Same as everyone else — get on the ferry, get taken to Phi Phi, get herded around Maya Bay with 60 other people, eat a mediocre lunch, get herded back. And I remember thinking: this place is extraordinary, and this experience is terrible. Not terrible in a dramatic way — just ordinary. Just a transaction. Tick the box, here’s your photo, back on the boat.
That gap between what this part of the world actually is and what the standard tourist experience was offering it as — that bothered me. I’m not a man who likes leaving a problem alone.
So I bought a boat. Not a grand gesture, not a carefully planned business decision. I bought a boat because I wanted to take people on the kind of trip I’d want to go on myself. Small group. Timed to beat the crowds. Proper time at the good spots. Crew who actually knew the water. Food that was worth eating. The kind of day that you come away from thinking: that was the best day of the trip.
Phuket Sail Tours was not an overnight success. It was built trip by trip, season by season, through word of mouth and repeat customers and guests who came back the following year with their friends. I didn’t advertise much in the early days. I relied on the simple logic that if every person who came on a trip had a genuinely good day, they’d tell someone.
They did. The business grew. We added boats, carefully, maintaining the same maximum group sizes because the moment you pack more people in, the experience changes and not for the better. We won our first TripAdvisor award and then kept winning it. But none of that was the goal. The goal was always the same thing it was on day one: give people a day on the Andaman Sea that they’d still be talking about when they got home.
The sea is the same. That sounds obvious, but it’s the thing I keep coming back to. The Andaman Sea in the early morning, before the tourist boats are out, is the same extraordinary place it was when I first saw it. The limestone cliffs of Phang Nga Bay at sunset haven’t changed. The fish at Nui Beach don’t care how many TripAdvisor reviews we have.
What changes is people’s ability to actually see it. The more time I spend crowded with strangers on a rushed itinerary, the less of the actual place you absorb. The more space and time you have, the more the sea gives back to you. That’s the thing I’ve been trying to create, one trip at a time, for 20 years.
I’ve been offered the chance to scale up more than once. Bigger boats, more passengers, more revenue per day. And every time, the answer has been no. Not because I’m precious about it, but because I’ve watched what happens to the experience when the numbers go up. I’ve been on those boats. I’ve seen the look on people’s faces when they’re packed in, rushed through, and dropped back at the pier at the end of a day that was technically a success — they saw Phi Phi, they got a photo — but didn’t feel like anything memorable happened.
I don’t want to run that kind of business. Maximum 20 guests. Good crew. Proper time at the good spots. The same trip I’d want to go on myself. That’s it. That’s the whole philosophy.
If you’re coming to Phuket — first time or returning — I’d love to show you the version of this place that I fell in love with. The early morning Andaman. The hidden lagoons of Phang Nga Bay. The fish at Nui Beach that come right up to your mask. The sunset over the karst cliffs that turns everything gold.
It’s still there. It’s still extraordinary. And if you book the right trip, you’ll see it the way it’s meant to be seen.
You can also read more about what makes our trips different in our guide to why small group boat trips beat the big tour boats — or just get in touch and I’ll tell you myself.
— Captain Mark
Exceptional, uncrowded island day trips from Phuket. Family-owned and operated since 2004.
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