I recalled a story about Siam's port of Tavoy (now in Myanmar) by someone who claimed came from a Mon timber boat building family. He told me of boat building gangs (teams) went up the forest north of Tavoy to cut down trees, build 50-60-man long boats for use to land assault troops. Many boats were (are?) still hidden in caves because the moonsoon exxpected then didn't come in time and the boats were too heavy (the timber was still green - not dry enough) for the men to carry down to the coast.

I'd love to investigate that but I don't fancy spending years on the mountains looking for wooden boats built some 400 years ago. They would tell us how good the boat building skills were back then.

China has a boat building site and a onced-dense forest to prove that Chinese could build ocean going 'sampans' >50 meter long. Timber boats that size need 'extreme' carpentry and joinery to withstand the rolling waves.

Thais had contacts and seen example of sampans back in Sukhothai. Did Thais build boat along the same engineering principle of Chinese boat builders?

Very interesting area to explore.