Happily Lost in Samet

---

A beautiful photo of a deserted beach rarely lives up to its promise - crowds, noise and litter often conspire to destroy the desert island fantasy and replace it with a messy, smelly, awkward version of a real life beach.

I think I have woken up in Beach Porn.

A wooden beach hut, an empty sandy beach and the sounds of lapping waves to wake me every morning.
Its simple, its been dreamt about so many times, but rarely experienced.
This never happens for real. Does it?

Ao Naun on Ko Samet is probably the only place on the island where the hippie vibe that once smouldered here, still exists. The shacks are rickety and airy - no concrete - the view out to sea is almost as clear and empty as the view back in to land - when you swim out, there is no trace of a plastic bucket chair or an all-day football pub, just rocks, trees and a short sweep of golden sand.

Give me these ingredients and I will relax, zone out and lose whole days, even weeks.

Concrete and pubs fill the rest of the beaches of Ko Samet - Ao Naun is too small to develop and Noina and her family keep the place friendly and relaxed, with some of the best home cooking i've tasted in Thailand.

After a week of floating in the sea and drifting from day to day, it was my turn to hit the pubs and the Kareoke.
With the help of some Peace Corps voluteers form the States and their friend - Jessica (who turned up on the beach with a bag full of fake noses and joke glasses... a girl after my heart!) we banged out Barry Manilows 'Copacabana' into the wee hours.
I was 'Tony', Jessica was my 'Lola', with a skirt down to there and a feather in her hair.

Who needs pornography when life is more real?

Next afternoon with a head full of the taste of last nights' buckets, and an urge to move on, I said good-bye to Corps and Jess from a speedboat and bombed it off to the mainland.

As I zipped across the smooth waves, I was hoping to bump into Jessica again, climbing off the ferry. Kareoke and buckets can do magical things to a young man's mind.

Once again my curse of laziness caused my downfall as I had left Samet far too late in the afternoon to go by bus. A 1000 baht taxi took me to the sleepy overnight town of Trat and my next crossroads... South to Ko Chang, East to Sihanookville or North to Angkor Wat?

---

Photos

Ao Naun
the one

Sunset from my balcony
Goodbye London Stress... hello Cococbana!