On Friday afternoon, the 4th of August, I joined Nicky, one of the Phuket Big Bike week organizers, with a few of his friends, and a Tourist Police escort, to drive up to the north of the island to welcome some Porsche Club cars coming to Phuket.
In his open-top Mercedes, which all his girl-friends just love to sit in the back of, we got a great view of his friends’ expensive cars which included a beautiful looking red Ferrari that Michael Schumacher would be proud of driving, whenever he comes to Phuket as I gather he does occasionally.

 We waited at Sarasin-ThaoThepkrasatri Bridges not for Michael but a convoy of members from the Porsche Club of Singapore led all the way from the Malaysian-Thai border by the Tourist Police.
They lined up in the style of a Monte Carlo race start, despite the heavy noisy traffic bouncing across the bridge. Nonetheless, Nicky was suitably impressed by the collections of Porsches: “Like em? I love it!”

 The 25 cars from Singapore were led by Eddie Keng, Vice President of their Club, who was glad to be here:
“We really enjoy Phuket so we try to come every year and enjoy the Thai hotels and all the food and all that entertainment.”
He told me about the trip up:“It was not very eventful, one puncture on Highway 44 fixed in 5 minutes, running a little bit late you know.”
“Crossing the border- because Thai immigration also help us to give us assistance we managed to get all the customs clearance done 3 hours before the main group arrived.”
These were very valuable goods for customs to check:
“Most of the cars are a minimum of 10 million baht and some of them 15 million baht; the expensive cars are turbos and also the GT3s, but we also have some very nice older cars. They are really collector cars. One that is 1957 really old Porsche.”
“The oldest one is 911 over there, I’ll introduce you to Billy, owner of oldest Porsche that came here – what year is it? 1972 – a 911, 2.4 litres . Do you have to be as old as the car to drive them? I am as old as the car! Ha ha!”
“Actually Billy sent this engine for rebuild in Germany. Look – so proud of this car. Must have taken a long time! (Wait for me Howard!) She’s a babe! Does it help to understand German? Not really. Driving is universal. What do you like about the Porsche? What’s the best thing about them? I actually liked Volkswagen from way back before, so this is sort of next step in motoring.”
Billy enjoys driving this in Singapore despite the rules, taxes and weather: “I drive this almost a daily driver. With the sunroof open? With aircon! Ha ha!”

 They were lucky the weather was dry and fine for them this weekend in Phuket. After they posed for photos with Nicky and friends around Billy’s car, I joined the convoy from the bridge to Phuket town inside one of the Porsches belonging to Howard Delaney, an Australian member of the Club:
“This is a twin turbo, 4 years old, you can hear the radios; we all got radios so we can talk to each other, about the traffic, commentary going on, map system so we not get lost, stay together, own navigation system.”
“Quite strict rules convoy procedure, stay in position, not overtake, quite strict rules, leaders & sweepers in the group, others only speak in emergencies, so radio channel doesn’t get too clogged.”
He admitted that they had to drive carefully in Thailand as the unpredictable can always happen: “You’re right it’s reasonably undisciplined out there, the lorries you really got to watch, we just come down Highway 44 which is one of the new expressways so this part of Thailand across peninsula can be driven quite quickly, but very careful with lorries in left hand lane that just pull out in front of you and that happened a few times.”

 Looking back on their experience, some of them did admit that occasionally they speed up to 230-260 km per hour, but normally only on the F1 race track in Malaysia where they visit on the way, but not in Phuket town traffic, where I left them to leisurely enjoy a weekend of go karting, shooting, golf, and fantasizing in Fantasea, before they return this morning from Le Meridien hotel at Nai Harn. Catch them if you can!