Travellog: Thailand: Bangkok and Koh Samed

Tuesday, July 22 2003

Poke, poke.

No response.

Poke.

"Kaaaat..."

I was suitably shocked when Kat cam to life immediately. She hadn't heard the alarm clock, she hadn't felt the pokes, but amazingly, she heard her own name.

We had a quick breakfast at the Arnoma (which, for me, consisted mainly of potato wedges and pineapple juice), then at 8:30 we got onto a minivan for the three-hour ride to Rayong, on the coast of Thailand, to catch the boat to Koh Samed (also Koh Samet or Samed/Samet Island). Here's an outside link to info about the island.

The road out of Bangkok is pretty bumpy at times. More than once I wondered what I was doing, bouncing around like a pea in the back of a minivan going at 80 km/hr without a seatbelt - but on the whole, the trip there was uneventful. I stared at miles after miles of banana trees and ponds. Everyone soon went back to sleep, though I stayed awake. The minivan stopped several times: once to pay a toll, once to wait at a railway crossing, and once to go to the bathroom. I have never seen such a primitive toilet - not only is it a squat toilet, but you have to manually flush it! At least there was tapwater; I didn't much fancy having to get flush water from a river.

We arrived at the Nuanthip Pier at Rayong without incident, but there we encountered problems. Apparently we had been misinformed. The road journey from Bangkok to Rayong had taken an hour more than we had been told it would, and the ferry left at 10:30, not 11. It was 10:45. We had to wait for the next ferry at 1 pm. We were appropriately pissed off, though at least we had an air-conditioned office to wait in. We took the opportunity to explore the pier.

There was a large, dust-covered carpark behind Nuanthip Pier, and lots of stalls surrounding it. Me and Kat went over to do a bit of shopping. There were so many seashell windchimes! I bought two turtle magnets and a waterproof disposable camera, then walked around taking photos. Everywhere you looked, there were resting dogs. The pier itself was built out of wooden planks on a framework. The gap between the planks was sometimes quite wide and you could see the waves a few metres below. Here's a shot of Nuanthip from halfway out on the pier, and here's a shot of the pier from Nuanthip.

At long last an officer came from the resort to sort things out, and things went smoothly from there. To make up for lost time, we took a speedboat to Koh Samed. (Normally, one would take fishing boats like these, and spend 30 minutes instead of 15). The speedboat was lots of fun - we wore lifejackets and raincoats, and the front half of the boat bounced across the waves, splashing us all! Someone had to go sit in the back of the speedboat to steady it a little - poor guy got completely sopping wet.

As soon as we got off the boat Kat and I ran madly towards the lovely, lovely, beach, yelling 'Beach!! Beach!!!'. We must've been quite a sight, but for someone who had been waiting to get here for two hours, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do! We didn't even notice how the pier creaked and wobbled dangerously - or perhaps we'd made the pier wobbly by running on it.

We quickly got our rooms, or rather, bungalows. They were beautiful! We had two little bungalows in a row of identical bungalows, with a fishpond outside. There was a pagoda in the middle of the fishpond, where you could sit on the cushions and just relax. It was terrific. Inside, we had no TV or telephone, but we had a double futon and tatami on a raised platform, a couple of games, incense burners...and of course air-conditioner. It was all done very simply, but tastefully. The shower was actually open-air so leaves would fall onto you as you were bathing! This outside link has better photos than I do: Mooban Talay Resort.

While I was taking photos, I noticed that there was a tiny little speck that seemed to be crawling in a very un-insectlike manner - so I bent down to see, and it was a frog! It was about as big as a housefly (in the background), but not much bigger than an ant. There were also a whole lot of squashed froggies - guess they were too small to hop out of the way fast enough! It was amazing how many frogs there were; it's something I'll never forget. Kat and I called them 'Minifrogs' but I still don't know what their real name is.

All our meals on the two days were at the resort restaurant, so fortunately for us the food was good. For lunch on Tuesday, I had a noodle, which wasn't bad at all. But in particular, we loved their young coconuts! I've never had such sweet coconuts before, and they were consistently sweet too. Later we saw one of the resort staff up a tree, picking coconuts - no wonder they were so fresh!

The restaurant faced the beach. Here's a few photos taken after I'd finished eating:

The view from the restaurant
Hammocks
The resort's private pier
Coconuts in the tree
More coconuts
Part of the restaurant and the pier

Kat and I decided to go for a walk along the beach. I soon kicked off my flip-flops! The sand was so fine that you didn't feel it even if it got in your shoes, but it felt so good between our toes. Here's one of my footprints; we'd walked down to the water and I wanted to see if I could make a soggy print! The beach was mostly deserted the whole time we were there: it was a private beach, owned by the resort, and 150 metres is a lot of beach to share between 24 bungalows. And the resort wasn't even full, so usually it was only us on the beach!

Here are a few photos taken while we were walking on the beach.

Fishing boats
Lovely clouds
Boat

Later we also had a dip in the pool. It's a small pool, but pretty. There are olive trees growing over it, so we had a bit of fun fishing fallen olives out of the pool and taking silly underwater photos!

That evening, we also had a short walk outside the resort, to see what the island was really like. I snapped some more photos of fishing boats and a  sunset. Turns out that evening is a bad time to walk in Thai villages; all the dogs were loose and barking at us! We soon went back. There was one little dog that kept running around us and trying to play with us - he wouldn't go away. I think he belonged to Samed Cliffs, another resort just two minutes from ours but which didn't seem nearly as nice. Thai chickens are different from the chickens we have here. They've got long necks and long legs and not much body - and they sleep in trees! I was definitely surprised when I saw a chicken in a tree.

We showered early that day. I wasn't sure I wanted moths hovering around me as I showered - dodging leaves was quite enough! The water tended to dribble out slowly, so Kat, who has very long hair, had to use the coconut shell to wash her hair! Let me explain. If you look at this photo of our bungalow again, you'll see a pot next to the path to our door. That pot is half-filled with water, and has a few of these flowers floating around and half a coconut shell - they are for washing the sand off your feet when you come in! Very thoughtful, isn't it? There's one in the shower too, and that's what Kat used!

Later we went out to sit on the beach. It was so peaceful out there under the stars with a breeze softly blowing, sipping iced lemon tea and digging our toes in the silky sand. I felt awfully dozy, it was so comfortable. Apart from us, there was a couple of locals out on the beach with a torch and bucket, catching crabs...and they were good at it! They would sweep the beam across the sand, right where the waves end, and when they saw a crab, they would run and grab it. We had a look in their bucket, which was full of little palm-sized crabs. I was very much in awe! My uncle grabbed a torch and had a go too...but he didn't see a single crab. And honestly, what would he have done with it if he had caught one? ;)

Falling asleep was significantly quicker than the night before, since we had four lovely poofy pillows between us. It helped that the futon was deliciously comfortable too.

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