The island of Phuket attracts different types of people looking for different types of things; from honeymooners searching for romance, sailors and surfers following the waves and sun worshipers seeking that perfect beach or perfect sunset. For Ives Solo however, his reason for visiting was none of these; he came to Phuket to search for his sister.

Ives, a customer liaison manager from Yorkshire, UK never knew his father and grew up as an only child, or so he thought, but at the age of 38 he decided to investigate further.

?As you grow older you decide what?s important in life and I wanted to fill in the gaps. I heard about Emma a year ago, so using Facebook, I made contact and introduced myself as a distant relative in May 2008.? he said.

28-year-old Emma has been in Thailand for thee years, teaching English during the week and working as a dive master at the weekend. She remembers the skepticism which which she received that first message.

?He said he was a relative. I have 500 friends on Facebook and there?s a lot of weirdos in Thailand! He was really cagey at first and didn?t say who he really was, so I blocked him and told everyone on there to ignore him if he emails them.?

Thankfully though, Ives did not give up. After a while, a friend of Emma?s suggested to her that there was a possibility that he could be a relative, so she contacted him.

An online relationship was gradually built up which eventually led to Ives not only revealing that he was in fact her brother, but that he had plans to visit her.

Emma said, ?At first, I didn?t believe he was going to come. But he rang and said he had booked a flight. All my friends were like what are you doing??

Ives arrived in Phuket in early October 09 and although Emma only lives in Rawai (an hour away), the drive home from Phuket International Airport took more than five hours because they stopped off to visit Emma?s friends and had a drink or two at each of them.

Meeting his sister was not the only first that Ives has experienced in Phuket, it was also the first time that he went scuba diving. With Emma being a keen diver for more than a year, she convinced Ives to learn to dive and he now has a open water diving qualification and can dive up to 18 metres deep.

They also went rock climbing, Go-Kart driving and drove around the island exploring many of Phuket?s most beautiful beaches.

Ives remembers one particular drive over the hills of Kamala turning out to be particularly significant, ?Emma said ?I think we should have tattoos.? It took about a week to create what we wanted to get.?

They both have the same tattoos but in different script, Emma?s is in traditional Thai while Ive?s is in ancient warrior script. The tattoos contain five words and according to Ives represent what they have gone through: Acceptance. Respect. Younger sister. Older brother. Love.

Seeing and hearing the brother and sister talk with sincerity about their tattoos is a wonderfully symbolic reminder that anything is possible in all of our futures, it is a pledge that the tattoo will not only be a part of them for their the rest of their lives but also that they will be a part of each other?s lives.

Asked what it meant to Ives to discover that he had a sister and moreover that he got on well with her, he said ?Like a feeling where you are continually happy. It?s like a place where we all have problems but there?s someone there. She does amazing things with her job and the children she works with. To understand myself is to look at Emma, she inspires me.?

Since meeting they have discovered that they share more than just a common blood line. They share the same sense of humour, fashion sense and laid back attitude.

To their surprise, they discovered that when Emma lived in England she too spent a large part of her life in Yorkshire and that they lived a mere 20 miles away from each other. They even found out that they used to go to some of the same bars and clubs and that there was a real chance that they had gone to the same event at the same time.

Phuket is a magical place and the perfect venue for a meeting of such magnitude, Ives really liked his time in Phuket, and promises to return one day.

He is thankful to the island that he had the opportunity to find his sister in such a wonderful place, and said with a smile, ?It made no difference where she was. I would have travelled twice around the world. I?m not complaining that it was in Phuket though!?