The body found on Phuket's Karon beach today had been formally identified at Vachira Hospital in Phuket City as Jennifer Laidley, who vanished in the surf on Monday evening.


PHUKET: The body of a woman washed ashore today close to the spot on a notoriously dangerous Phuket beach where Australian tourist Jennifer Laidley disappeared while swimming at dusk on Monday.

Identification is likely to be made by her travelling companion, fellow Australian nurse Lisa Crosland, also 44, from Sydney.

The pair were on the first day of an overseas holiday they'd first decided to take 20 years ago when Ms Laidley vanished.

Ms Laidley opted ''on impulse'' to go for a swim at Phuket's Karon beach on Monday evening, although she had seen red flags and at least one warning sign earlier.

Ms Crosland told Phuketwan she thought her friend's decision to swim after a few drinks and a big dinner was ''not such a crash-hot idea,'' but accompanied Mc Laidley as far as the shallows of the Karon surf.

Within minutes, Ms Laidley had vanished into the crashing waves. Ms Crosland reported her friend's disappearance to police at 7.45pm.

Phuket searchers on sea and shore looked for Ms Laidley, from Queanbeyan, near Canberra, all day yesterday, without success.

Soon after 7.30am today, a body presumed to be Ms Laidley washed ashore a few hundred metres along Karon beach from where she disappeared.

Australia's honorary consul on Phuket, Larry Cunningham, has been notified that a body has been found.

The body was dressed in a black one-piece swimsuit of the kind that Ms Laidley was wearing when she disappeared.

Earlier, Ms Crosland told Australia's national broadcaster, the ABC, that she thought the search ''was a bit too relaxed. I thought that there would be at least a few more out there looking.

''Is this really how you go about looking for someone who has just drowned?''

Karon beach has claimed at least 12 victims since April last year. Phuket's lifeguards struggle to keep people out of the water when red flags are flying, as they were on Monday.

While searchers on Phuket use boats to look for lost swimmers, there is no emergency helicopter service. It's often the case on Phuket that the incoming tide returns the bodies of the drowned before searchers can find them.

When 23 survivors of a dive boat capsize floated off Phuket in life rafts after an incident that killed six tourists and a Thai in 2009, the survivors eventually hailed a passing fisherman and used his mobile telephone to call in their own rescue.

By that time they had spent many daylight hours in the water, floating just 20 kilometres off Patong, the busiest spot on Phuket's holiday west coast.