Eat, Drank, Relax, Be Happy

The motto was not mine. It was hanging on a tree on a beach in the Andaman Sea, painted on four planks.

Not necessarily in that order

Eat. Drink. Relax. Be happy. The sign said drink; I went with drank, because by the time I posted about it, I had. I would like to state for the record that we did all four. Not necessarily in that order.

The arrangement was simple: we worked by day and toured by night. Thank goodness for weekends, which we spent exploring Phuket and Singapore.

Boat tours, monsoon edition

Monsoon season was upon us, and it did not care what we had booked. Our boat tours out to the Phi Phi islands turned into wild adventures at sea.

One minute it was turquoise water between sheer limestone walls, longtail boats bobbing at the foot of the cliffs. The next, a rainstorm broke up the day. The rain came in so thick that the mountains behind the bay disappeared and the speedboats at anchor faded to outlines. Jay and I laughed and gleefully got sopping wet.

If you have ever wondered whether a Phi Phi boat tour is the same trip in June as it is in January, I can answer that for you. It is not.

Why the sea picks a fight every May

Thailand runs on two monsoons, and they take turns.

From around mid-May to mid-October, the southwest monsoon is in charge. It starts as a high-pressure system in the southern Indian Ocean, below the equator, blowing out as southeasterly winds. When those winds cross the equator, they swing around and arrive as southwesterlies, carrying a moist mass of Indian Ocean air straight at Thailand. That is the rainy season.

Now look at a map. Phuket's west coast, the side with Patong, Karon and Kata, faces southwest across the open Andaman Sea toward the Indian Ocean. The monsoon hits it head on.

How big waves get depends on three things: how hard the wind blows, how long it blows, and the fetch, which is the distance of open water it blows across in one direction. Strong wind over a short stretch of water makes chop. Strong wind that keeps blowing for days across a whole ocean makes real waves. The southwest monsoon supplies all three for months at a time. In a strong spell, the Thai Meteorological Department forecasts waves of 2 to 3 meters in the upper Andaman Sea from Phuket northward, more than 3 meters in thunderstorms, and tells small boats to stay ashore. When those waves break on the west coast beaches, they feed rip currents, which is why the red no-swimming flags go up so often in the wet season.

Here is the part I love. Cross Thailand's narrow southern spine to the Gulf of Thailand side, to Koh Samui and Koh Phangan, and the southwest wind has the whole peninsula in its way. That coast gets its rain from the other monsoon instead: the northeast monsoon, from mid-October, which picks up moisture over the Gulf. Its wettest month is November. One country, two coastlines, two opposite beach seasons.

So when our boat tours turned wild, nobody had done anything wrong. We were on the windward side of an ocean in the one season it is guaranteed to be awake.

The show goes on

The monsoon did not cancel the evenings either. At the Marriott, a dancer in a gold mask and a pink costume performed knee-deep in the courtyard pool while the rain came down and the audience huddled under the eaves. After dark came the fire: spinners standing in the water and a fireball rolling up into the rain.

Back on dry land, there was a swing hanging from a tree above a near-empty beach, a lily pond, and a beach bar built from corrugated metal painted turquoise, blue, red and yellow, with a solar panel on its thatched roof.

Singapore, in color

Singapore came in color too. At Thian Hock Keng temple, red lanterns hung in rows under carved and gilded eaves, above a floor of blue, white and brown tiles. In Kampong Glam, murals covered a whole lane, with the gold dome of the Sultan Mosque at the far end. Orchids in every shade I could name and a few I could not. Water lilies in front of the skyline. And Marina Bay Sands twice: once in the gray of a rainy afternoon behind wet pink bougainvillea, and once at night, lit up purple across the water.

And yes, we ate and we drank. Cocktails in electric blue, butterfly-pea purple, and pandan green. A platter of dragon fruit and oranges served in their own shells.

In Commonwealth company

Our evening adventures came with a collective unit of British tourists and expats, and that is how I came to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in Commonwealth company.

Some context for my fellow Americans. Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne on 6 February 1952 and was the first British monarch ever to reach a Platinum Jubilee, seventy years on the throne. The UK gave itself a four-day weekend for it, from Thursday 2 June to Sunday 5 June 2022, and on the first night beacons were lit across the UK and in every capital city of the Commonwealth.

Singapore has a particular stake in that date. When the Queen took the throne, Singapore was still a British Crown Colony. At the city's official Jubilee reception on 2 June 2022, Singapore's deputy prime minister put the British expat community there at about 40,000 people, the largest from Europe, and pointed out that the city has its own Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street.

I have no claim on any of this. I was adopted for the weekend, and I was a very enthusiastic adoptee.

If you go

• Phuket in the wet season. The southwest monsoon runs roughly mid-May to mid-October, and the start and end move from year to year. The west coast beaches take the brunt of it.
• Flags. A red flag means no swimming, even when the sea looks calm and the sky is blue. Swim between the yellow-and-red flags, where lifeguards are watching.
• Boat tours to Phi Phi. The islands are a boat ride from Phuket across open Andaman water. The Thai Meteorological Department posts marine advisories, and in strong spells it tells small boats in the upper Andaman Sea to stay ashore. Check before you go, do not argue with an operator who cancels, and if the rain comes anyway, lean in.
• Want calmer water in June? Look at the Gulf of Thailand side. Koh Samui's rough months are the other end of the year, roughly October to December.
• Pack a dry bag. Everything that goes on a monsoon boat comes home damp. Which brings me to the laundry.

Our nemesis

Thanks, universe, for another brilliant adventure, and for the suitcase full of laundry that came home with it. Every good trip ends in a showdown with that suitcase. Our nemesis.