Koh Samet

This weekend my mom and Paul flew into Bangkok for their winter break from school. Since they were arriving at 7 AM on Saturday and I was meeting them at the airport I decided I would stay the night there instead of waking up early. After school on Friday I ended up heading into Bangkok to spend the day before going to the airport later that night. When I got to Bangkok I took care of some things at the bank and ended up spending a lot of time wondering around MBK Mall and Siam Paragon to waste time until my mom flew in. Around 7 PM I headed to the airport on the Sky rail to pass the next twelve hours! The first few hours in the airport were fine as I had my laptop and access to the internet. After a while I began getting tired of using my computer so I began people watching instead. I have to admit there are a lot of interesting people in an airport, who help pass the time. I witnessed an early 20's Thai girl cry when she saw her grandmother, I'm guessing the young Thai woman had been out of the country for a while. I heard some Germans sitting next to me having a weird conversation about frogs. Plenty of couples reuniting, and around 4 in the morning a white guy who was completely drunk. His friend was carrying him out to their taxi, and an airport worker was trying to help him who chuckled and laughed when he came back in. I had forgotten how cold an airport could get and also have gotten so used to the warmth of Thailand that I was absolutely freezing. I put on my one pair of long Thai pants over my shorts and had my arms in my shirt, as I didn't even think to bring a sweater. That night I didn't sleep a lot, but I did get quite a bit of reading done.

The next morning I met my mother and Paul, and gave them both hugs. They were obviously pretty jet lagged from the airplane ride, so all three of us were tired--as stated above I hadn't slept. They ended up renting a driver to Koh Samet, and the driver owned a minibus that I have to admit was quite comfortable with only three passengers. After all hopping into the minibus we drove down towards Koh Samet catching up on the last 5 months. The drive to Koh Samet is about 3 hours which gave us plenty of time to catch up.

Once we got to Ban Phe we took a speedboat taxi to Koh Samet, which took around 45 minutes. The sea was fairly rough and the boat was going over some big wakes making the boat trip a bit bouncy. The driver had to stop for a bit to refill the gas tank, and while he was doing this the boat was rocking quite strongly back and forth. I looked at my mom and I believe she was suffering from a slight case of sea-sickness. The speedboat taxi took us directly to our little resort and we had to exit by jumping into the water and carrying our bags to the shore. Once arriving on the island we had to pay a fee as it is a national park. The small apartments were quite nice, and had a log cabin feel to them. There was the main bed downstairs, and if you climbed up a ladder there was another room upstairs. Due to some confusion with the staff I ended up getting my own little apartment for the night instead of using the upstairs room in my moms apartment. The cabins were right on the beach, so after dropping off our bags we decided to go for a walk down the beach.

Koh Samet really is the vacation place of the Thai's as there were quite a few Thai tourists there and the prices, while slightly more, were not nearly as high as most of the other islands in Thailand. We ended up seeing this cool statue of a mermaid, and climbed along some rocks at the waters edge. We went to a small bar and had a beer, and then after that headed back to our rooms. I was still tired and ended up taking a nap. A few hours later my mom came and woke me up and we all went to have dinner. Afterwords we went to shoot a game of pool. Once this was finished we went back to our rooms, and I played around on the Kindle my mom had brought to let me use while in Thailand. After that I went and knocked on my moms door to wake her up to go take photos of the beach with me. We went around taking photos for about half an hour before heading back, and exhausted I went to bed.

The next morning I woke up and had a quick breakfast of some toast and watermelon. I booked my ticket on a minibus back to Bangkok for later that day. After my mom, Paul, and myself, went and explored the small city on Koh Samet for a while, and walked to the other side of the island, which has a small pier for bigger boats to dock at. After this we walked back to our beach and I left for a while to go explore some of the rock faces jetting out into the ocean. They were quite beautiful, but a little slippery and slightly treacherous if you were to slip on them. After exploring for a while I went back and found my mom and Paul who were lounging on some chairs eating bananas. I sat with them for a while eating tangerines and then we all decided to go have some lunch. After lunch I took some photos I had forgotten to take the previous day and headed back to pack my bag. On the way back I found this cute stray puppy, and beside my better judgement decided to play with him for a bit--fortunately I didn't get anything from him. After I packed my bags and went and waited on the beach for the boat to show up. As usual the boat was late and I didn't end up leaving until 45 or so minutes after I was supposed to. I gave my mom and Paul a hug goodbye, they kindly gave me a little Baht to get back to Bangkok, and I hopped onto the boat. Once I got to the port I found my minibus, which this time was a lot more packed then when it was a private minibus, and began my journey back to Bangkok. On the way back I finished A Life of Pie, which is a really good book.

Once I got back to Bangkok I decided to take a taxi back as I had a bag full of stuff my mom brought me and didn't want to lug it onto the skytrain and a bus. The taxi driver was nice, but as usual was trying to take a long way to my apartment so I gave him an, I know what you're doing look in the mirror, and asked him if we are going in the right way, and he quickly resumed the proper course.

It was only a quick weekend trip as I had school the following day (Monday), but it was refreshing to get down to an island for the weekend and it was nice to see my mom. This weekend I will be heading down to Hua Hin and I will update my blog after with how it went.

Koh Samet- Fire Throwers