It’s been a while since I’ve written an ows race report! So here we go.

Since 2021 (post-covid era), I’ve been managing to keep up the tradition of at least one ows race a year. And now that I’m in Singapore, I’m trying to tick off swims throughout South East Asia – SEA swimming if you will 😉

I’ll kickstart my backlog of ows race reports with my first (attempted) ows race for this year, which (spoiler alert) was sadly a DNF. Since moving to Singapore, I’ve been partaking in the Oceanman swim series. This year, wanting to tick off a swim in Thailand I signed up for the 5km ows race Oceanman Krabi. But unfortunately things did not go as planned for this race, before even leaving Singapore!

Oceanman Krabi OWS race on 18 May 2024:

I had booked a daytime flight out of Singapore at 11:55am on the Saturday before the race, due to arrive at Krabi at 12:25pm, leaving enough time to attend the race briefing etc, with the swim to start on the Sunday morning. My departure flight was delayed to 3:45pm instead, and didn’t actually end up departing Singapore until 5:30pm. What a waste of a day, having to spend over 6 hours at Changi airport. Wish I had known earlier that the flight wasn’t going to leave until late in the afternoon, then I could have stayed at home! Le sigh.

Ultimately I didn’t arrive at the race hotel in Krabi until 7pm, leaving me less than 12 hours before I had to swim 5km. I didn’t have a chance to see the beach (and it was dark) or the race course, or even attend the race briefing. By the time I grabbed dinner, and checked in and settled into hotel and get gear ready for the next morning, I did manage to be asleep by 10pm. It had a been a long day of being stuck at the airport and travel to get there.

Fast forward to Sunday morning: I woke up at 5:20am to get ready for a 7am race start.

The swim started off ok, with the water temp being a little too warm for my liking, around 32 degrees celcius by my guesstimate. About a km from the shore, the swim then became a jellyfish soup. I literally saw hundreds, if not thousands of jellyfish. You had to actively try and dodge them. The amount of jellyfish was insane. I ended up getting stung soooo severely at around the 2km mark. With no rescue boat nearby, another stung swimmer and I made the decision to swim to one of the course boats we could see around a half km away, so we slowly swum up to it, in a lot of pain. Before we reached that boat, we got picked up on by one of the smaller boats instead and got taken to the bigger medical boat instead.

There were a few of us on the medical boat, where we got doused in vinegar. My face and arm in particular were stinging, on fire and red. I was in a lot of pain. Eventually they took us off the medical boat into another smaller boat which took us to the beach/shore so we could officially DNF. The stinging pain was real!

Back on land, my skin was very red and stinging!

My face and skin were red, everything hurt, and the constant stinging felt like I was fire, with no signs of fading. I grabbed my stuff and went back to my hotel room so I could stand under the shower, and get clean and the salt and vinegar combo off my skin. Post-shower, and over the next 12 hours, the jellyfish effect kicked in. Skin got red and patchy, and the lacerations started to come through. The stinging wouldn’t subside and continued until the next day. It was super uncomfortable and not fun.

Post-shower, my arm was feeling hot and battered, and continued to feel hot and throbby.

Opposite the hotel, there was thankfully a small pharmacy where I showed them my stings and they gave me some pills and cream to help with the burning pain and stinging. Vinegar, ice and meds were my best friends.

Over the course of the next 2 weeks, my jellyfish stings became itchy, inflamed, with dark lacerations to my arms and my cheek. I applied various creams to help soothe the itchiness, and to help with the skin repair. The lacerations have since faded, but geez, this was not a fun experience. I’ve swum in races before with jellyfish, but never in my entire swimming life had I been stung so bad as this. Incidentally, I got stung by a jellyfish on my lip (that wasn’t fun!) on a previous holiday (non-swim race related) in Phuket, so not my first time being stung in Thailand.

Warning: jellyfish sting photos ahead. Some of these photos were taken at various points up to 3 weeks after being stung. The stings went through phases: initial red patchy splotchiness, then the lacerations come though, then the lacerations appear as lines of lumps and got itchy and inflamed, then they appear as brown scars and lines which eventually fade. The scars and discloration for the most part have disappeared after weeks of applying creams to help soothe them and help with the fading. I was predominantly stung on my left underam, down the arm, and side chest area, left cheek/jaw, and slightly on my right arm (but nowhere near as bad as the left underarm). It was like I had hugged a soccer ball-sized jellyfish midswim under the water on my left side, hence my left arm and cheek being the main affected areas.

Post-race, many swimmers complained about the amount of jellyfish. Race organisers acknowledged that given the amount of jellyfish, this race for 2025 has been scheduled for March (instead of May when this took place).

What looked like an idyllic race venue, was marred by what lurked beneath the waters. This is a risk of open water swimming, but also unfortunate when Mother Nature prevails.

The following day after the race, I went for a stroll along the beach and the beachshore was littered with jellyfish, so not surprising I had gotten stung. The race really shouldn’t have been held in such conditions.

I was bummed about DNFing this race, only completing about 2.5km of the 5km course before pulling out.

My quest to complete an ows race in Thailand remains unfulfilled. Nonetheless I recently did a 5km ows race in Vietnam which was jellyfish-free, so swim race for this year is accomplished.

An Oceanman swim in Thailand still remains on the bucketlist for next year….maybe Phuket might be a better (jellyfish) option.