Boats In The Gulf Of Thailand

[Liquid Soul]

Does anybody know how old the boats from Seatran, Rajah, Lomprayah and Songserm are? how long is their life expectancy?

Some of them are starting (or already) to look quite bad and dangerous, is it only a matter of time before something unspeakable happens?

And what happend to Seatrans ferried coming from Don Sak to Koh Phangan, and more important, Samui to Phangan, it seems with cancellation of that service, Phangan took a step back in it's development, and it's connection with the outside world, why did that happen?

Moon

[sbk]

Songserm boats ran on the Chao Praya river before coming to Koh Samui/Phangan. According to my husband they have been running one of them here for at least 25 years. Not sure if that is the one that sank and was then brought up and refitted but it is one of the ones that is still running

[adaminsamui]

The ferry that fgoes from Nathon was last serviced i think in 1987! i remeber seeing the warrenty card on the inside of the ship!

But hey, nothing will happen untill the ship actually sinks, which is a scary thought!

[Japhrodisiac]

I know that at least one of the Songserm boats is 60+ yrs old. Those are wood, some leak slowly, are noisy and I find quite unpleasant to take. The Seatran Boats are decommissioned Chinese passenger ferries, you can still see the Chinese writing on several parts of the boats. The Raja ferry, I think I wont take it anymore because the last one that I took was taking on a lot of water and was riding quite low in the water relative to the car deck. Some scary stuff here for sure.

[Jose]

And what happend to Seatrans ferried coming from Don Sak to Koh Phangan, and more important, Samui to Phangan, it seems with cancellation of that service, Phangan took a step back in it's development, and it's connection with the outside world, why did that happen?

Rumour around here has it that a major local food distributor had a lot to do with canceling the only car-ferry service to Samui.

jose '-)

[John 1]

Have a look at the news of a car ferry in Indonesia catching fire and some people killed, this is a reminder of what could happen on the Samui car ferries, people smoking on the car deck even though there are no smoking signs, an accident waiting to happen.