Beach Volley Festival finals served up at noon tomorrow

Isaac Stone Simonelli

PHUKET: The finals for the Thailand Beach Volley Festival Phuket will take to the sands of Karon Beach tomorrow at about noon.

The international amateur beach volley tournament features competitive categories: professional men, professional women, amateur men and four-on-four.

“We are really happy and little surprised with the standard of play; it’s a bit higher than expected,” Charlie Solares-Chungyampin, the director of Beach Volleyball Thailand, told the Phuket Gazette today. “We have a lot of international and local players, as well as some national players at the event.”

Mr Solares-Chungyampin, who grew up in with the beach volleyball scene in California, is working to develop the game in Thailand.

Full story: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket-news/Beach-Volley-Festival-finals-served-at-noon/63535?desktopversion#ad-image-0

-- Phuket Gazette 2016-03-26

When I first came to Thailand early 90's beach volleyball consisted of the Katoeys at the far end of Patong beach by the khlong, and Friday jungle ball in Karon with a lot of the local businessmen.

Nothing hurts the ego more than getting stuffed by a Katoey (that sounds sort of wrong), reworded, blocked and the Friday jungle ball was no rules other than you tear the net down you have to bring a case of beer the following Friday for the crew.

Now there are some really, really good players coming here to train. I keep telling people the Hilton has a lot of land back by the tennis courts to set up multiple courts and they could house players for a proper training facility.