Rolf Graf
Survivor style adventures on Koh Tan
Updated: Aug 4, 2018
Team building event “Castaway on a deserted island” with Sierra Wireless Communications on Koh Samui

The Event Brief
Take up the challenge, be competitive, find solutions, be mentally and physically challenged and outwit, outplay and outsmart your opponents in our super charged team building survivor style adventure program, adaptable to all beach, hotel, jungle and any other inter – galactic locations!
Past team building event
On 28th March 2014, Beunite facilitated a survivor island style team building event for 78 delegates from Sierra Wireless, a well-known communications company based in China and Japan.
The event location
Koh Madsum, the perfect location for survival style team building in Koh Samui, with a fantastic stretch of secluded sandy beach and clear blue waters coupled with its rustic background of palm trees, makes the ideal castaway survival experience!
The team building event schedule
13:30 – 13:45 – Depart from Amari Palm Reef by minivan
13:45 – 14:30 – Board our luxury speedboats and travel at high speed to Koh Madsum
14:30 – Arrive at our Survival Island location
14:40 – Event briefing by our lead facilitator followed by the first challenge.
14:50 – 15:20 – Challenge 1 – Find a place , create a space and build your base
15.20 – 15.40 – De-brief challenge 1 , award 1st team reward and issue new instructions
Round Robin Challenges – Each team competes for the rewards by rotating through each challenge , every 30 minutes and collecting necklaces along the way.
15:40 – 16:10 – 3 activity stations – team versus team, rotation
16:10 – 16:45 – The Final Challenge – Dive the letters
16:45 – 17:15 – Event de-brief followed by awarding the winning team with immunity and the Survivor Idol!
17:30 – Depart Koh Madsum for Koh Samui
18:15- Arrive Koh Samui and transfer by minivan to Amari Palm Reef . Chaweng.
The Program
Departing in style, Sierra Wireless chose to travel to our Survivor location by luxury speedboats, the perfect beginning to a challenging afternoon of team building activities.
The journey took approximately 30 minutes whizzing past the fabulous beaches and resorts along the west coast of Koh Samui, including Chaweng and Lamai, before sighting the large headland of Koh Tan in the distance and opposite, our team building event survivor arena, a stunningly beautiful, unspoilt island, with a large stretch of outstanding sandy beach, Koh Madsum, creates the perfect location for outdoor tropical team building.
Everyone disembarked the speedboats and headed to the beach, excited and ready for an afternoon of adventurous and challenging team building activities.
Camp Building
Find a space, create an space, build your base!
The group was split into teams of up to 14 participants and their first challenge was to find a place, create a space and build their base, a location for the teams to discuss the challenges and to provide shelter during the afternoon. With only limited resources of bamboo, rope, string and netting, teams had to improvise to create a shelter that would in a survival situation, protect them from all possible elements.
There were many different designs of camp, some were better constructed than others with the main objectives being to provide shelter, be sturdy in the face of strong winds and rain and to be creative in relation to the natural surroundings such as combining the camp with the wild coconut palms around them. The winning team achieved all of these objectives and received the first team building reward necklace.
Survival Rotation Challenges
Next the teams were challenged to win more necklaces by competing in three survival style activities
Catapult
Ready, Aim, Fire! – Race for the balls, load your catapult, and aim for your catchers to net as many balls as possible in our combat arena.
Inventory Transfer
Puzzle it out! – 1 and 2 hold the key to figure out the moves, of this clever 5 piece tower puzzle.
Ring stack
It’s all in the lean (and trust in your team!) – Lean and hold , scoring points is your ultimate goal, release the ring when at the point you can’t take no more.
Each team building game required the full participation of everyone in the team with a variety of team building objectives to try to achieve, from placing your catchers in the best zones for catapult and competing to catch the balls, to trusting your team members as you lean as far as you can to place your ring and to work together using problem solving skills to crack the combination of moves to successfully recreate the inventory transfer.
The activities were set out utilizing our idyllic location of a beautiful sandy beach and clear blue waters of Koh Madsum to the full, on a rotation basis, teams had 30 minutes to win the challenge and then move to the next location. Plenty of enthusiasm shown by all participants, all in high spirits and clearly enjoying their afternoon of adventure team building, survival island style.
The Final Challenge! – Dive the letters
Once each team had completed the activities, the final challenge was issued with everything still to play for, each team had to select 7 swimmers and decipherers.
The swimmers task was to swim out into the sea, approximately 30 meters, dive underwater, view a letter and swim back to shore. Once they arrived at the beach they had to advise the group of deciphers of the letter which the saw and then the next swimmer was allowed into the water.
Once the deciphers had received all of the letters they rushed with intensity to unscramble the word by writing in the sand using bamboo sticks before then racing into the sand pit to search under the sand to find the letters and make the winning phrase.
This proved to be the pivotal activity of the survival island team building event, as all teams had been in with a chance of winning immunity and taking home the coveted title of Survivor island challenge winners.
Each team was very competitive during the final challenge with lots of shouting and encouragement given from the shoreline right up until the final moments, when the winners of race the letters had known, they had won the Sierra Wireless Survivor Island Koh Samui team building event!
The winning team!
The winners were awarded with their trophy and title and were applauded by all as Beunite facilitators reviewed each team’s performance in the de-brief before the participants returned to Koh Samui by speedboat for a well-earned evening of rest and relaxation, savouring the adventurous events of the afternoon of spectacular outdoor team building on a beautiful deserted island!