Not the beach in "The Beach" but a beach nonetheless

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So I had planned to go on a 2 day trip to what, in my bit of research, sounded like the nicest chilled out beach closest to Bangkok, Ko Samet (I had from the get go decided I couldn't be bothered to spend all my time trying to get down to Ko Samui et al to be surrounded by a bunch of partying Aussies and Brits).

Cameron and his Chilean friend who had arrived, Max, wanted to get to a beach too because they were leaving for Vietnam soon so decided to come along. We left on Monday morning on the bus and let's just say it was another one of those trips where you feel like you could walk it faster! It took nearly half the day to get to the pier in Ban Phe. From there, we took a boat to Ko Samet.

We hadn't arranged any place to stay, figuring we could just rock up and get a place no problem. Well, we were pretty much right. Once you get there there are no real roads on the island. Instead, there are guys driving pick up trucks and you can just hop on and hop off as you want for a small price. We wanted someplace cheap (not hard to do!) and didn't feel like trekking all over the island, so we went with one of the first places we came to. It consisted of bungalows so for about $5 US a night I got my own rustic bungalow with a massive bed. Of course, no AC or bathroom or anything but hey, Ko Samet is popular with locals and not as fancy. It was fine for 2 days and I was glad to be off the mainstream backpacker path a bit for once.

So Monday, Monday night, Tuesday, and Tuesday night basically consisted of a lot of....nothing. Seriously, our time was spent sleeping in, lying on the beach, exploring a bit, and eating. The place had a restaurant (if you could call it that) right on the beach and so all the time I was thinking about, say, $.25 milkshakes and how I needed to make myself wait a bit longer! There was obviously no nightlife there but the places would show movies on the beach so we did that at night. The weather was overall pretty good but the beach was just not that impressive. After Hawaii, Fiji, Caribbean, Oz, etc. Ko Samet was just an average beach.

It was enjoyable going there and but as usual, I was bored out of my mind by Tuesday and anxious to get doing something again. I can only take so much sitting around! We headed back to Bangkok on Wed. morning but of course with the tedious journey we didn't get back until Wed. night. It was pouring when we returned and so we opted to bite the bullet and take a tuk tuk back to the hostel; fun times.

Thursday morning I tried to see if I could make any room in my bags to buy some touristy crap that I didn't need, then in the afternoon it was off to the airport to return to Oz!

I am glad I went to Thailand but it was by no means one of the favorite places I've ever visited. I was extremely ready to move on since I was so excited to go back to Australia!

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Photos

Ko Samet main drag
No matter how far out of civilization you feel you are getting, you cannot escape westernization it seems.

On the way out
It wasn't exactly heaven on earth, but it was nice to have a change of scenery from Bangkok.

Side of the pier we didn't see before
Hmm...maybe we do want to go back to Ko Samet...