When the production behind Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) brought its cameras to southern Thailand in 2024, Simba Sea Trips was involved from the very first scouting runs through to the final day of marine filming. We consulted to the location-scouting crew, ran the senior marine production team through Phang Nga Bay, put our modular vessel Mu Ming to work on a key scene at Koh Kradan, supported swamp sequences in the mangrove tributaries around Krabi town, and finished the shoot running our speedboats around James Bond Island. This is the behind-the-scenes story — and the reason a Phuket day-tour operator was trusted with work on a film of this scale comes down to one thing: how we run boats.
Our contribution at a glance
- Scouting & consulting — guided the senior marine production team through Phang Nga Bay; helped rehearse a speedboat-through-the-rocks action beat and scout the RIB-escape location near Koh Pak Bia and Koh Lao Lading.
- Koh Kradan — Mu Ming served as the camera platform filming the hero boat’s beaching run (Mu Ming itself wasn’t beached).
- Krabi mangroves — supported the swamp sequences shot in the mangrove tributaries around Krabi town.
- Phang Nga Bay finale — Mu Ming and our speedboats ran the closing marine operations near James Bond Island; the speedboats also served as executive transfer vessels.
Our involvement began before a single frame was shot. We started by consulting to the scouting crew, taking the senior marine production team out across Phang Nga Bay to assess locations near James Bond Island. On the water with them, we helped rehearse one of the film’s action beats — a speedboat threading a narrow gap between two rock stacks, which appears in an action sequence early in the movie. We then scouted a third location further south, near Koh Pak Bia and Koh Lao Lading in the Krabi island group, which went on to form part of the RIB escape scene near the end of the film. Scouting is half navigation, half judgement: knowing which gaps are safely passable, at which tide, in which conditions — the everyday knowledge of an operator who works these waters.
Mu Ming: the modular camera platform
Mu Ming isn’t a standard tour boat. We modified her so the entire roof and front railing section can be removed, turning the foredeck into a clear, rigid working deck that can carry and deploy a camera boom of up to 40–50 feet — believed to be the only boat of its kind in Phuket. That capability is exactly what put her at the centre of the most technically demanding marine work on the shoot.
▶ [VIDEO EMBED SLOT — “Watch Mu Ming in action”] — forthcoming YouTube compilation of Mu Ming in its movie-platform configuration (produced by Simba IT). Insert YouTube embed here at publish + add VideoObject schema. (Interim fallback: self-hosted
Mooming Koh Kradan.clip.)
Koh Kradan: the beaching scene
At Koh Kradan, in Trang province, Mu Ming played a significant role in a scene that becomes a major beat in the film — a boat running fast onto the beach and becoming beached. To be clear, Mu Ming wasn’t the boat that beached: she was the camera platform, used to film the hero boat’s run onto the sand. Capturing it was genuinely challenging — holding a stable camera platform while another vessel approaches the beach at speed leaves no room for error, and the shot has to be repeatable and safe, take after take. It’s the kind of marine-camera work that only happens when the platform and the crew are up to it.
Krabi’s mangroves: the swamp scenes
After Koh Kradan, the production based itself out of Krabi for around two weeks, and our team supported the swamp and mangrove sequences that appear in the film, shot in the mangrove tributaries around Krabi town. Working in tight, tidal, mangrove-lined water is a different discipline again — close quarters, shifting depth, and a crew that has to keep a production moving without incident.
Phang Nga Bay: the finale
The final phase brought the shoot back to Phang Nga Bay, up near James Bond Island, where our speedboats and Mu Ming ran the closing marine operations. Here our speedboats also served as executive transfer vessels, moving senior production personnel quickly and comfortably across the bay between set-ups.
One thing we can speak to, having been on the water throughout: the film’s locations are heavily graphically enhanced, so the on-screen world is a stylised, prehistoric version of these real places. Matching a frame to an exact spot is harder than it looks — the landscapes you’ll actually visit are recognisable, but the film dials them up into something else entirely.
Why the work came to us
A film unit doesn’t hand a major camera package — or its senior team — to a casual operator. Simba is owner-led; I’ve spent my life on the water, from waterskiing and houseboats as a kid to running commercial marine operations in Asia since 2014, and I bring 23 years as an airline pilot to how we run the company at the operations level: pre-task briefings, defined safety margins, checklists and properly maintained kit. (Our boats are helmed by local, Thai-licensed captains; my role is in the standards behind the operation.) That discipline — applied to scouting, to a beaching shot at speed, to tidal mangrove channels, to fast executive transfers — is precisely what a production needs on the water, and it’s the same discipline behind every ordinary day tour we run.
Ride the same water, with the same crew
You don’t need a film crew to experience the boats and the team that worked on Jurassic World Rebirth. The same vessels, the same local captains and the same operating standards run our everyday small-group tours and private charters. To see the Phang Nga Bay seascapes that drew the cameras, our Phang Nga Bay / James Bond Island Tour runs from ฿4,500* per person; to explore the Krabi islands around Koh Hong, Pak Bia and Lao Lading, our Krabi Luxury Private Charter crosses directly by sea from ฿41,690*. And our companion guide maps every Jurassic World Rebirth filming location you can visit.
