PHUKET INTERNATIONAL WOMENS CLUB

. Jill Crampton

Adrienne Tusoni

Elizabeth Byrne

Brigitte Krauss Tessarotto

Susan Gray

Christine Gangsted

Linda Cumming

Joan Watson

Cindy Ratcliffe

Founding President Jill Crampton remembers...........

After moving from Australia to Bangkok in 1987 and working very hard for a couple of years it was nice to move to Phuket and slow down the pace. During our hunt for housing we met American Lyn. She knew a couple of foreigners and somehow I met Adrienne, a Frenchwoman, Angela an Englishwoman, Raewyn and Steven and their parents, missionaries working with the sea gypsies and they knew Elizabeth. The only obvious thing to do was start a women's club. Many of the women were lonely. Most of us had spare time on our hands. we needed to get involved. Once we started we grew and collected some wonderful members.......Whilst my time in Phuket was relatively short, perhaps 2 years, it was very fulfilling. The club started some wonderful charity work which you continue today. How could I forget our first formal ball where all the members sand "We Are The World" as well as my first and only speech in Thai.

 Those were the days, good memories and I am so pleased you are continuing today. My advice to you is to keep on going. You get so much more out of life when you give of your own. When I left Phuket I left with many fond memories, many wonderful people to remember and a little baby girl I had delivered in the Mission Hospital who today is 19 and a real joy............

Angela Prajanatabut, founding member, remembers........

Twenty years ago Adrienne Grandi (she was using her husband’s name then), Jill and I became friends.  At that time there were very few foreign women living in Phuket and life was not as easy as it is now for foreign ladies and things were difficult to find.  We came up with the idea of a women’s club to be able to meet other foreign women on the island, exchange ideas and swop recipes!  We arranged the first luncheon at a mutual friend’s apartment.  Eh owned the Kitmanee Apartment in town and it had a bar/restaurant. One of the very first luncheons was attended by Agnes Hebler the founder of the Phuket International School amongst several other ladies.  I can’t remember when Khun Olivia joined but I think it was in the first 3 to six months and definitely when we officially formed our club!  One of our first functions was held at the then prestigious Pearl Hotel and I distinctly remember getting up on stage at speaking the Southern Dialect in front of many Phuket dignitaries!
 
Phuket was very different back then but it was peaceful and so relaxed.  The beaches were much more beautiful than they are now and of course the island was full of rubber plantations!  In those days I would go to the market to buy my clothes, we did not have shopping malls and I thought nothing of riding my motorbike from Phuket town to Rawai with plastic buckets and bowls hanging from the handle bars even when I was nine months pregnant!  I made my own terry cloth nappies and had plastic pants sent from England – pampers did not exist!
 
At 25 I was still very young when the cub first began and starved of home comforts.  I think for me at that time I felt that the club was an ideal opportunity for me to meet other women and enjoy things like cinnamon rolls. I was a young foreign woman who had been married to a Thai and living with his family for five years by that time – it was not easy believe me I was desperate for “a touch of home,” so to speak!  I think I dropped out of the club because for me the club seemed to be heading in a different direction than what I had first envisioned – of course being young and selfish and finding it difficult to make ends meet I got bored with all the fund raising!  I am much older now and at 45 I clearly see the beauty in “giving,” but back then I was only interested in cinnamon rolls!
 
I could go on and on but I will not bore you anymore!  I have often thought about going back to Phuket International Women’s Club but was usually always so busy working and trying to make ends meet. I consider myself very lucky to have met Lek as he is a wonderful husband who has and still “gives me the world’ every single day!  I don’t have to work full time anymore as we have our own company and am studying to be a personal trainer and training for another marathon!  Life is so beautiful!