The travels of Justin

We woke up late on Thursday morning, a little unsure our bus would arrive in Banphe early enough to catch the ferry (really just a small boat) to the island of Koh Samet. “What the heck,” we, the bold travellers said to each other. We boarded the public bus expecting difficutly with language, etc. If you only knew what a comfortable ride we had on that 3.5 hour bus (costing us $3.50 each)…. They even had a server on board who brought us complementary drinks of Coke or water, and some cookies to much on. The boats ran all night long, contrary to the books we’d read, so getting to the island was very easy.

There are lots of accomodations here and we went with a small resort that had been suggessted to us by someone we had met in our travels; Ploy Talay. For under $20 per night we’ve got a good room, right behind the restaurant, which is right on the beach. We’ve been roughing it, and living off the land — Mike, you’d be proud. Nothing but fresh crab, huge prawns, flavourful curries, and fresh fruit shakes; is there a merit badge for surviving this?

The beach has very fine white sand. The ocean water is light greenish-blue and always warm. The waves are decent, but not overwhelming. We spent our first day here just sitting on the beach or playing in the water. Life is good. Despite our precautions and effort to avoid such a predicament, we still managed to get sunburned in our first day - what a travesty. So today and yesterday, we’ve donned lots of aloe vera cream, loaded up on better sunscreen, and spent our time in the shade reading books. I managed to read almost a whole book yesterday, The Da Vinci Code, and it was very good.

We wish we could post some pictures, but you’ll all have to just imagine. By day, we have chairs and umbrellas at the beach, where the water comes only a few feet away during high tide. At night, the umbrellas are replaced with lanterns and the sand is covered with straw mats. On the mats are small bamboo tables with cushion chairs that one must sit cross-legged on, or stretch your legs out and use the backing for some support. It’s very romantic with the sound of the ocean.

We’ll be here a total of 7 nights, so we leave this paradise on Sept 2^nd (but not a moment sooner). Our last day will be in Bangkok, so we’ll have a chance to see the Grand Palace, before we wake up early to fly home.

Anyway, it’s good to keep everyone informed of our progress so you know we’re okay, but it’s much to nice to stay inside on a computer. So back to the beach we go!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 28th, 2004 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Thailand & Cambodia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.