Conversation over the pounding music was challenging. One older crew member told us they really needed the break.
“The news says we’ve been at sea for nine months. To be honest I’ve lost track of time”, he said.
“It got boring. It’s never big enough on board. It’s big but it still feels like a boat, especially when you’re sharing it with thousands of people.” How long would it take them to get home to California? “Too long” he said.
Shakeira Fairfax, the mother of 25-year-old crew member Jada Fairfax, told Reuters there had been moments over the past few months when “morale was low”.
She described the period after hostilities broke out in the Middle East as an “uncertain” and “scary” time.
“I just can’t wait to see her smile. I can’t wait to hear ‘mum’, I know that’s the first thing she’s gonna say,” Fairfax added.
The crew have been well-drilled not to talk about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln during its long combat deployment in the operation against Iran, which have been the subject of criticism back in the US.
Some sailors were wary of making any conversation at all. Others referred journalists’ questions to their media teams. Visible everywhere in Pattaya were the men wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the letters SLG, or Shore Liaison Group.
It is their job to maintain discipline on land, to watch out for the crew members, some of whom are very young and inexperienced, and to co-ordinate with the local authorities during port calls.
US Naval Attache Kristopher Robinson did not answer questions from the BBC about activities that soldiers were banned from doing while in Pattaya, saying that “we’re trying to give the sailors as much opportunity for rest as they can”.
US personnel, he added, would “conduct themselves in accordance with US law, US naval regulations, and the laws of Thailand”.
