Two Korean tourists were found dead at the bottom of Phang Nga bay on Tuesday (October 21) after a horrific collision two days before between the speedboat they were riding in and a fishing boat.
The collision flung tourists around the inside of the boat and into the water. Most were not wearing life vests. All of those on board who survived the crash – 37 passengers and six crew – were hospitalised, some with serious head and spinal injuries.
Twenty eight were still in hospital as The Phuket News went to press on Tuesday. A Chinese tourist told The Phuket News what happened as the boat made its way back from Maya Bay on Phi Phi Le island to the Royal Phuket Marina. “I was sitting in the middle of the speedboat, towards the back. The weather was fine, the sky was very clear and there was no rain,” said Rui Xing Pei, a tourist from China.
“The speedboat was running very fast, banging through high waves but I nodded off.” He was still asleep when the speedboat, the Seastar 29, slammed into the trawler Sinpichai 11. The captain of the speedboat, Surat Mat-Osot, 36, later told police that he had been distracted by a black bin bag that was being blown about in the boat. He bent down to secure it.
When he sat upright again, he saw to his horror that there was a trawler dead ahead, and very close. He wrenched the wheel over but the hull of the speedboat caught on the trawler’s fishing gear, and slammed into the stern of the trawler.
Passengers were hurled in all directions, many being thrown overboard.
“When the accident happen, I lost my senses,” Mr Pei said. “All I remember is that a woman helped me to climb from the speedboat to the fishing boat, and I lay down on the deck of trawler.
“The next thing I remember is being carried from a boat to shore and being taken to hospital.”
Bangkok Hospital Phuket said that Mr Pei, who is sharing a room with his brother, another victim of the crash, was suffering from a “blunt abdomen injury”.
“I am feeling better now, but I still have some pain in my back,” he told The Phuket News.
Asked whether passengers on the boat were wearing buoyancy aids, he said that most were not.Did staff remind passengers to wear them? “Nobody warned us to wear the life jackets,” he replied.
Despite this, all but two of the people on board managed to survive being dumped in the water, some with terrible injuries.
Those two were Korean tourists Mr Go Min Woo, 31, and Mrs An Sun Yong, 28 Mr Go Min Woo, 31, and Mrs An Sun Yong, 28.
Throughout Monday and most of Tuesday, Marine Police patrol boats searched the sea around the crash site, aided by a helicopter from the Royal Thai Navy, along with fishing boats and others.
But it was not until Marine Police divers swam down to the wreckage of the Seastar 29 that the two missing Koreans were found close by, on the sea bed.
The skipper Surat Mat-Osot was arrested by Krabi Police, initially on a charge of reckless piloting resulting in injury. That charge has now been upgraded to one of reckless piloting causing death.