Ko Samet weekend

A bunch of us from the school- 14- went to Ko Samet this weekend, a little island about 4.5 hours from Bangkok. It was quite the adventure...
We left school around 4:30 and raced straight into rush hour traffic. After about an hour in taxis, we arrived at the bus station and got tickets to the Bang Pi harbour, which is about 3.5 hours away. Luckily we got there in time for a 6:30 bus! I was amazed at how cheap the bus is- 157 baht for a one-way ticket, which is about $4.50.
After the bus ride- which in itself was something of an adventure, what with the terrible smells and the apparent "No talking! No Fun!!!" rules that were in place- we stepped out into the street, where it promptly began to rain. Not just a little bit of rain- torrential downpour. We ran to the peir to rent a speedboat- in the daytime, there are ferries across, but since we arrived around 10:30 a speedboat is the only way to get across.
After a bit of negotiation, some cockroach sightings, and generally miserable wait time, we got onto a speedboat and crossed to the island. The water was very choppy and it was quite the ride!!! I thought it was tons of fun but some people were terrified or sick.
When we got onto Ko Samet we jumped in a songtam- an open-back truck designed to transport people from place to place in the most uncomfortable way possible- and drove into the main townsite, heading to Silversands resort.
We stopped early and looked for rooms at Tok's Huts, where there were 8 rooms available at only 300 baht a night, so we decided to stay there.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...



Our room- I shared with Stephanie- was small and dirty, with a great big gap under the front door so whatever creepy crawlies wanted to pay us a visit could do so as they pleased. One pillow had a dead something on it and it was covered in ants, so we got rid of THAT in a hurry.



The door to the bathroom...what lies beyond is too terrible to show. Seriously.

It turned out that it didn't really matter that the room was gross, we hardly spent any time in it and though we were SURE we were going to find somewhere else to stay for the second night we ended up spending both nights in that place. When we saw it in the daylight, it wasn't so bad and for only $9 a night ($4.50 each) we figured it wasn't a bad deal at all.



Roomie!

After unloading in our fancy new digs, we headed down the street to Silversands, where the party's at. There's dancing until 3:30 AM and it's literally on the beach- the water is about 5 metres away at its closest and no more than 30 metres away at its furthest. This was a nice change from Hua Hin, where the beach was in the opposite direction from many of the restaurants and bars; in Ko Samet, everything is steps away from the water.

I got home around 5 AM and didn't think twice about sleeping in my lovely little hut.

The next morning, we got up around 10 and had a decent breakfast at Jep's restaurant. That was the first place with genuine whole-grain bread in Thailand that I've found so far...I was very excited about that.





We spent some time on the beach and later went touring around on motorcycles- a guy from Finland drove me around with Jared and Stephanie on another bike to see more of the island. It was pretty exhilerating at times because what passes for a road in Thailand would be considered at best a backcountry hiking trail at home.



We stopped at a "beach", of sorts- on our side of the island, it was wide open beach with powder-fine white sand; this was different, with rocks and cliffs. Very beautiful, though...







The only problem with that beach was the fact that we could see how quickly another rainstorm was coming our way. We ran to the bikes and just as we jumped on the skies opened, making for an even more interesting ride back.

After drying off and saying goodbye to the Finnish guy, we had some dinner and then went back down to Silversands for round two of late-night fun.

This time there was a fire-spinning show. One guy had a fire stick and the other had pois (flaming weights on chains). It was pretty amazing, so amazing I was to enthralled to take any pictures!!!

I DID talk to the performers afterwards, though, and one says he'll teach me to spin. He's also a DJ and maybe I'll see him spin on decks, too!



We left in the morning, taking pretty much the same route back as we did to get there. The only difference was this time, we could take a ferry- so we did. It wasn't bad until it started to pour (the weekend of rain) and I learned I had the best seat in the house for free showers. I was soaked but it was still fun.



Ko Samet- thumbs up. I'm sure we'll go back eventually but I think we're going to try other places first.

Until next time,
Heather