Noisy as they can be, I’ve always thought Thailand’s long-tail boats are cool. I love the smooth shape of the hull, the brutally exposed automobile engine, its long shaft propeller, and the skillfulness in which the boat’s driver navigates the vessel, obviously years in the making.

My very first long tail boat ride took place off the shore of Lamai Beach on Koh Samui way back in 1988 during an excursion to one of the smaller islands in the region’s archipelago.

The scene above was shot near Krabi in the south a few years ago. I remember a time when daughter Elle was just a child and we were heading to Krabi to produce a travel story about the islands in the area. Elle had fixated on the world “krabi” and wondered why we had to go to “crab land”.

Perhaps the then six-year-old Elle was connecting the crabs she’d caught (and possibly been pinched by) the previous summer in the harbor of Vejbystrand with the similarly sounding word, “Krabi”.