It was Peter’s penultimate day on Gryphon ll and we decided to visit Koh Roi as our last island hong. Locking up the boat we went off in the dinghy happy that this had been such an enjoyable visit. Then… disaster.

Whilst still in the hong, the skipper of German yacht Nathape, Hanspeter and his son came to find us in a hurry to say that a local longtail boat had pulled alongside and 3 people had been aboard our boat. We knew that another couple had had thieves aboard in similar circumstances so we rushed back anxiously to the boat hoping that they had been unable to enter. Sadly they had discovered the galley hatch open and someone quite small had squeezed through. We were relieved to see our computers still there but as we searched things got worse. They had taken money from my wallet, about £100, and a lesser amount from Lorraine’s purse as well as our phones. However, it was Peter who was to suffer most as they took his wallet with all his Thai Baht and nearly £500 in Chinese Yuan that he was going to swap with us for our trip to China, his good mobile phone and an older one, his MP3 player but worst of all his passport with his Chinese Work Visa.

As I write this Peter should soon be back to Kunshan…. nearly 12 days after the break in. He had flown to Bangkok the day afterwards having reported the theft to some fairly disinterested police. However, as it was the Chinese New Year the Chinese Embassy was closed so he had to wait 5 days before he could start the process of getting an emergency travel document. This is only valid for a single named flight and cannot be altered. The process is:

1.  Check the Chinese will accept an emergency travel document

2.  Book a flight leaving enough time to get a visa

3.  Visit the UK embassy and get the Emergency Travel Document and

4.  Get a Chinese tourist visa.

The fact that Peter has a work visa seems to be irrelevant as although he has a scanned copy as evidence that he had one, he has not got the actual visa…which was of course in the passport. He can fly back to China as he now has an emergency travel document and a 30 day Chinese Tourist Visa which unhappily we think will cancel his work Visa. He will need to apply for a replacement passport which can take up to 6 weeks to come through and without a passport the 30 day Visa cannot be renewed and he would have to leave China.

Needless to say the expenses involved in all this have been dreadful: cancelled flights new flights, replacing all the phones, hotel costs, living and travel costs in Bangkok, admin fees for emergency documents, visa etc. It seems likely that the thieves simply threw away the passport as they are clearly not very sophisticated, for instance they did not take our credit cards. They also took some odd things like a small bag of cosmetics, a woman’s hairbrush and a woman’s small National Trust organiser bag – this made us think one of the three may have been female.

 The only positive note is that the crew of yacht Nathape almost certainly stopped things being worse. They noticed what was happening when they were swimming from their boat, they went after and bravely pursued the longtail with the three on board and took this photo. One of the three is hiding but knees are just visible.

We have managed through a number of contacts to spread the word and we made posters putting them up wherever we could  so that even if these guys are not caught others may be more wary about leaving their boats unattended. The local English Newspaper, the Phuket Gazette, are going to run a story about it and the article L did to support that has already appeared on Noonsite/Countries/Thailand, this is an international website for yachtsmen and others. All the marina managers and local charter companies have been made aware; one in particular has made contact with us as they intend to put pressure on the Thai authorities and marine police to make an effort to stop these evil bastards. We are hoping they will be identified; those who have seen the photograph have drawn attention to the white fuel tank and Honda engine which is apparently quite unusual for a longtail boat.

Thailand is a very beautiful country with many warm friendly people but just at the moment we will be happy to return to Malaysia. The biggest loser, of course, is Peter who came for a relaxed short break with his mum and dad and ended up with a stressful and on-going nightmare to deal with, truly on-going punishment for the victim. The outcomes for him are still unknown and we will only feel we can really put the whole sorry story behind us when Peter has a new passport and his work visa again.