Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2010
Entrance to the 'National Park'
what do they do with those fees?Our flight landed in Suvarnabhumi airport close to midnight and we were disappointed to see that the airport was still as grey as ever (whoever designed this airport thinking it would look nice needs a slap!) and then we waited for what seemed like forever to get through the Immigration queues. We seem to be making a habit of sleeping in airports; secretly we enjoy torturing ourselves with the stiff backs and necks from lying on the hard, cold floors and the feeling of eye dropping tiredness the next day!
Feeling a little worse for wear, we went to get the shuttle for the transportation centre, the lack of sleep is probably why we spent ages looking for the shuttle bus stop until the information desk pointed us in the right direction! What follows is a series of strange transport experiences - we waited at the Transport Centre for the bus to Rayong…when the bus turned up (bang on time) we weren’t really sure what to make of it. It looked pretty old and the driver was separated from the rest of the bus by a little compartment, complete with a door; there was also a stewardess too who gave
us water, got us settled into our seats and didn’t speak a word of English. Of course, the stewardess also had a small sealed off compartment at the back of the bus, complete with fridge and toilet (?). The bus was equipped with massaging chairs which we got slightly excited about but then had our hopes cruelly dashed because the wires were disconnected, although we couldn’t imagine having the seats vibrating along with the bus’ rattling, we probably would have ended up throwing up. After paying our 157 baht each we fell fast asleep (probably with our mouths open and snoring too) and didn’t wake up until we reached Rayong.
At Rayong bus station we had a short wait for a songthaew to leave for Ban Phe (the port for Koh Samet) although we aren’t really sure you could call it a songthaew as it was more like a cattle truck with seats along the side…it was a bargain ride at 25 baht each for the 20km journey even if the truck didn’t have any gears above 2nd gear! We then had another weird experience with the boat - a boat had just left and was called back for
our benefit, we had to clamber over two other boats to get into it (good job we didn’t have any big bags) and it was bright pink and was decked out in the Thai Royal Family’s pictures and plastic flowers. Let’s just say after a night of little-to-no sleep we were beginning to wonder if we were dreaming these strange transport experiences and it just seemed surreal!
We hadn’t been to Thailand in over 2 years and in this time, the exchange rate of the British pound to the Thai baht had plummeted by about 25%, add to that the extortionate 150 baht (£3!!) which all banks are now charging for international card withdrawals at the ATM’s, so we were rather worried about how much Thailand was going to cost us! Our worst fears were starting to be confirmed as we walked along the main road from the port and we started asking room rates at bungalow resorts - 1200 baht for a cold shower, fan room the size of a matchbox…erm what?! So we decided to head on down to the beach of Hat Sai Kaew to see if we had any better luck there…we strolled straight past
a mini beach
we wished we had some small figurines for this as it would have been an ace photo! the Park Ranger’s office where we were meant to pay a 200 baht entrance fee (Koh Samet is a National Park and Thai’s are charged 20 baht versus the foreigner’s 200 baht…that’s fair!), but as we only had small backpacks with us, the Ranger completely ignored us (bonus!).
Neil left Donna sitting on the beach (under an umbrella - it was raining!) and set off to find a room for us. The beach front rooms were very bad value with lots of dodgy wooden panels and damp involved so we ended up staying near the Ranger’s office in a fantastic room, a little over our budget at 800 baht but it was really nice with air con, hot shower, big fluffy towels (a big deal, honestly!), a fridge and a TV which had a huge range of 200 channels but didn’t have a single one which was English language!
We were full of good intentions to get up early and go running on the beach…although we woke up early every morning we were there the weather didn’t co-operate and it was pouring down most mornings and unfortunately we just weren’t dedicated enough to go running in the rain!
nice!
Sewerage flowing out onto the beach and into the sea! Koh Samet is supposed to be the driest part of Thailand, well if this was the driest we would hate to see what the wettest was…apart from our first day it rained every day - but being the true Brits we are, rain or shine there we were sitting on the beach - as you can see from the pictures most of them have grey skies! One of the days we were there had HUGE waves and we had great fun jumping and ducking in the waves like big kids. One thing we did notice was Koh Samet has the peskiest and biggest mosquitoes we have ever come across - until quite recently Samet was a malarial area and no wonder with the amount of mosquitoes there were. Donna even managed to get bitten through her long leggings…never known mosquitoes to be able to bite through clothes, so that was a first experience for us! Also, a couple of days the sea had thousands of strange small hard jelly 'tadpole' looking eggs floating in the water. We didn't find out what they were but they didn't sting or bother our swimming at all.
The food on Koh Samet did
not disappoint…as soon as we booked our flights we were planning our food choices! Most days we would have our lunch at Chilli’s restaurant on the main road which did really good value dishes on rice and at night we would stroll along the beach and choose from one of the many restaurants that set up there with little cushions and tables on the sand. The beach looked really pretty at night with lights strung up, the pictures we took don’t really do it justice. Our favourite restaurant by far was called Kitt and Food - huge portions of tasty Thai food and whenever Donna asked for a dish without meat (even if it wasn’t on the menu) there was never a problem preparing it. Every meal we had there was ace so it quickly became our ‘night time restaurant’! After our meal we would then head up the main road (mostly so we could walk off the huge amount of food we had just eaten) for our weakness - nutella pancakes! Whenever we find somewhere that does nutella pancakes we just can’t resist it. On this occasion it was Lex the Pancake Lady who made brilliant thin, crispy and
loaded with nutella pancakes (30 baht/60p)…yummy, we are drooling on the keyboard remembering them!
Hat Sai Kaew seems to have a reputation as a party beach, which in our experience wasn't really true. There was one bar/restaurant place called Ploy which had a disco/band but it wasn't really a 'happening' place. We would really advise everyone to avoid this place, not only does it have terrible and bad value food, the drinks are waaay overpriced and the worst thing of all is that this place pumps sewerage onto the beach and into the water...yukky!
The rain on our last night on Samet kept us awake for most of the night - we were first of all worried everywhere would be flooded in the morning for when we were walking to the port and second of all worried because we only had one cagoule between the two of us and no umbrella (because the stupid airline lost it - not the first time this has happened!). We made a mad dash when the rain went off for a while - the road in front of the guesthouse was flooded up to our mid-calves but we made it ok and
had time for breakfast at the port in Ban Phe while we were waiting for our minibus transport. One thing to be said about Thailand is that - unlike some other places in Asia - it is soooo easy to travel here; it’s a well oiled tourist machine with different transport options available and the travelling between places goes very smoothly indeed.
We really enjoyed our time in Koh Samet, we enjoyed it just as much as we did Koh Chang and it’s slightly easier to get to at only 3 hours from Bangkok, probably why it’s so popular at weekends with Thais. We would definitely go back at some point, although we hope the weather would be a bit better than it was for us this time!
One curious thing we would like to end on is something we saw at Bangkok airport while we were waiting for our departing flight. The Thais have very strict laws regarding lèse majesté (ie an offense against the dignity of a reigning sovereign) which have seen various foreign nationals imprisoned for saying things about the Thai King. The strange thing is that this respect for monarchy doesn’t seem to extend
to other countries monarchs - not that we are monarchists or anything but we saw a Thai girl with a photo of the British Queen on her t-shirt. This photo also had a clowns wig and nose stencilled onto the Queen’s face - we wish we could have got a picture. It was funny in it’s own way but we were very puzzled as to why it was ok for this girl to ‘disrespect’ the UK’s Queen but as soon as a foreigner says anything about the Thai King they are thrown in jail? Curious and weird…oh well we can’t understand everything in Asia…actually we still don’t really understand most things in Asia and we’ve been here a long time now!
So our time in Thailand was at an end, we enjoyed it a lot…we will definitely miss the food and we may be back in the near future. As to the future…hmm, where will it take us? We are soon coming up to our 4th anniversary of leaving the UK - we are still having fun discovering new places…is there anywhere left? You bet there is!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.499s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 33; qc: 152; dbt: 0.39s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.6mb
Maisondubonheur
Pierre-Alexandre
When are you back!
Hi Guys, Happy to read your post...well...guess during the rainy season...it rains...maybe a reason why we are not much in July and August around. Do you know when is your nexttrip to BKK....still in the Philippines or planing soon on KL? Let us know, would be fun to have you guys in Bangkok. Writing this from Vienna airport...I know, was in BKK yesterday...Have fun! Peter