To say we drove would have been fanciful. I don’t know what he was on, but I later learnt he was probably high on Mai Thai, the local whisky which is as rough as sand. He dropped me outside a shabby shop at the side of the road not far from the airport in a place called Ban Rak.

After he had extracted two hundred baht from me and with no receipt, I gathered up my bags which he had dumped on the road and entered the shop. This “shop” turned out to be a German bakery with an interesting back room. It was occupied by several girls and several mattresses.

The girl behind the shop counter looked plainly bored when I asked her for a room. When I got no response I tried again and eventually she slipped off her stool and went out the back. I had by this time, made a plan of sorts and had decided that I would stay one night here then search around in the morning for more suitable accommodation.

As I waited for the girl to return, a blue Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Classic, no less, came to an abrupt halt outside and a tall foreigner got off and walked in. I said “nice bike” to him and he looked at me, nodded and went up to the counter. After a short time when nothing happened I made a comment about the pace of life here in Thailand. He grunted a response and then disappeared out the back.

Left alone again I looked at my watch. It was still on London time. I advanced it 7 hours. By now it was starting to get dark and a wave of tiredness suddenly came over me. I drifted off a bit and came to when the girl returned with the foreigner. I asked again about a room but got no sensible response. The foreigner looked at me as if he understood and said I could stay over at his place tonight. How I got on the back of his dream machine with all my bags I don’t know, but in no time at all we were cruising along the coast road towards Bohput.

The perfect LOCATION is only a dream away

My newfound friend was called Wolfgang and he owned a dive shop in Fisherman’s Village. When we arrived he picked some keys up from his shop and showed me upstairs to a small but tidy room and then left me to it.

Exhausted from the journey and a bit jet-lagged I decided on an early night. Without unpacking, I set the alarm on my mobile for 7:30am and settled into the short single bed.

I woke suddenly to hear my mobile ringing. I groped for it in the dark and just managed to grab it before it vibrated itself off the bedside table. The voice on the other end came straight to the point. Had I found the location? I switched on the table lamp and looked at my watch. It was 2am. Through the fog of sleep I reminded the voice, my so called Producer, that it was 2am here, GMT+7 hours ahead of London and no, how could I have as I’ve only just arrived. At that I rang off, lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, thinking... and this is just the first day!

The following morning, despite little sleep, I woke before the alarm, showered and dressed. I wandered through Fisherman’s Village and found, to my surprise, a French Boulangerie selling coffee and freshly baked croissants. I ordered a large cafe au lait and croissant and sat outside by the road under an old palm tree.

As I waited for my breakfast, I started to make a To Do list in my mind. First off, I must get wheels. No self respecting Location Manger can get by without them.

By the time my coffee and croissant had arrived my list had grown to the point that I could no longer remember it in full and I would need to resort to pen and paper. I borrowed a pen from Lait, a very tall and thin Thai girl who served me and I began to make my list on a paper napkin. I reminded myself that I must get some local knowledge; otherwise, I would never find the perfect location on time.

departure gate

The trouble with location finding is that everyone thinks all you have to do is to go out and there it is waiting for you. Find a house, find a bridge, find a beach! everyone has seen one so they think it is easy. By now I was getting anxious as I felt time was slipping by and I hadn’t even started yet.

I finished my coffee and walked up the road to a shop house, which was hiring motor vehicles. There and all alone, in front of the shop, was a small burgundy coloured Jeep with a sign saying it was for hire. Without further ado I paid the asking price of 600 baht a day (this was all I could afford on my tight budget) and drove off down the road. It wasn’t anything like the Range Rover I was used to in the UK and it drove like a pig, but at last, I could say I was on my way. My first inclination was to get a map of the island and, low and behold, I found one in the glove compartment. It was a typical tourist map, but it showed all the areas around the island. I studied it for a short while, made up my mind, then set off on the 4171 to Choeng Mon on the north side of the island.

I parked at the Imperial Boathouse resort and walked to the beach. Cheong Mon is a small bay with hotels and resort bungalows along the beach. Opposite the Imperial Boathouse is a small island called Koh Farn Noi, which you can walk to at low tide. I got out my digital camera and started snapping the beach scene. I felt at last I had made a start and there would be no stopping me now. I arrived back at the dive shop later that day feeling I had caught the sun, but also knowing I had covered a good part of the island. Once in my room I loaded the photos I had taken onto my laptop and started sorting through them. I selected the good ones and attached them to an e-mail to the producer. The locations I had seen were not as good as I had expected and I had to remind myself that the island had changed a lot since my first visit over fifteen years ago.

In fact, it had changed beyond recognition and the beaches I had seen all those years ago were no longer pristine and they were now packed with all kinds of holiday makers including a surprising amount of Brits. I got a curt reply back. Where are the deserted white sandy beaches you are SUPPOSED to be looking for?

The following day I decided to blow the budget and get serious, so I hired a speedboat from the pier in Fisherman’s Village to Koh Phangan, the full moon party island I had heard so much about.

This time I had done my research carefully. I had spoken to Wolfgang who knew Koh Phangan very well. He told me where some of his favourite dive sites were and where to look for the best beaches, including a remote paradise beach he didn’t want others to know about and when I heard about it I knew it was going to be the one !!

The journey took no longer than 20 minutes and we arrived on Haad Rin beach where the famous full moon party takes place every month. I wasted no time in instructing my Thai skipper to take me to Wolfgang’s secret beach. Fortunately, Wolfgang had drawn a map and told me that the beach can only be reached by boat on the east side of Haad Rin.

The speedboat skipper look puzzled at first but, after studying the hand drawn map, a light went on in his head and he smiled. As we approached the remote beach I could see that it was perfect, just what I was looking for. I jumped from the boat and waded in the crystal clear water to the beach, which was fringed with coconut palms and the white sand oozed between my toes as I positioned myself for the perfect shot and clicked away.

Today, I felt I had cracked it! I e-mailed the photographs and all the details to the production company in London and waited.

TO BE CONTINUED