Surf Points 98

From Tiffany Schauer, July 6, 2008

While waiting for my team to assemble to take me to the Ban Mae Maeh Orphanage outside of Chiang Mai, I decided to take a few days off and check out Phuket. The first Aman hotel was built in Phuket. I was interested in seeing whether the twenty-year-old hotel was as excellent as its newer counterparts. The Amanpuri did not disappoint. The architecture, design, and location are a tribute to the culture, environment, and topography of this land. As per usual, the service, people, and atmosphere were of the highest quality. The food was excellent, I recommend the poached seafood salad and Pad Thai with seafood.

I also took the opportunity to dive with the recommended dive operation H20 sportz. It’s monsoon season, so diving is a little tricky. That is to say—visibility can be limited. For me, that just meant I need to get a little closer :). The diving was exotic: schools of lionfish, colorful sea snakes, and many moray eels….enough to keep most divers engaged for days. www.diveh2osportz.com.

The trip highlight, however, was discovering Luke Remmers’ Phuket surf club. One clear morning Luke and a small group of kids looked to be having the time of their lives learning to surf in front of the hotel beach. I took a boogie board out to Luke and his troupe and found out he teaches surfing to anyone interested—including Aman hotel guests. Luke came to Phuket about four years ago—a former fireman from San Francisco. He basically brought surfing to this area of Phuket. His true passion, however, is taking care of the neighborhood tsunami survivor kids. Although, there were about six kids with him this day, he told me he has anywhere from three to twenty-five with him at any and all times. The kids and their families lost their tin shack homes in the tsunami. Luke helped move them to alternative homes and has remained in the children’s lives through his surfing business. He bought the kids boards, is teaching them to surf, and enlists them to make his tourist teaching sessions a lively experience for all participants. What a great experience for visiting kids to hang out with local kids, bond, learn, laugh, and surf all day? You can hear Luke and his kids laughing and catching the waves all the way up in the hills….and it is a lovely sound….You can contact Luke at lukeremmers@yahoo.com or track him down on facebook at Phuket surf club.

Read Tiffany’s dispatches from her aid missions in Thailand.