Koh Samet 6 days

Koh Samet is total relaxation. There’s not much to do on a small island other that eat the abundance of seafood, walk around the coast, read a book, get a massage, explore the island on motorbikes and swim so we did all that and fully took in the island vibe. We hit Koh Samet right in the rainy season which lasts for the full month of September, this meant two rainy days out of six, two sunshine days and two days with some overnight rain followed by sun or cloud. It was super quiet when we arrived on a Tuesday, being the off season but got 500% busier on the weekend when big groups of people come from Bangkok to party hard. We loved the restaurants and bars on the beach here with sandy floors, fairy lights, hanging lanterns, mosquito coils burning under the table and the nightly fire twirlers busking along the beach.

We found a hidden gem at Ao Tub Tim, a large collection of bungalows right on the beach with fantastic food, just enough action to be entertaining and a cool pontoon to swim out to. The local Bangkokians who arrived on Sat thought is was their hidden secret and were surprised we had found it, coming all the way from New Zealand but nothing is sacred anymore with online booking sites! From Tub Tim we could do the coastal rock walk over to the busier beaches 10 mins away or south to the even quieter and equally beautiful southern beaches. We hired motorbikes and fully explored the island from north to south, east to west and Jacob enjoyed the motorbikes so much he persuaded us to do it again for a second day. We managed to track down a bar with an ex Englishman who, given a couple of days warning, managed to work out how to stream the All Blacks vs South Africa game. In this football mad country they have literally zero knowledge of rugby. We sat with about 10 south Africans for a pretty tense game, but a fantastic few beers afterwards.

Getting off the island was a bit of drama, the speedboat we booked with didn’t turn up and after numerous phone calls, finally arrived an hour late to pick us up, as the waiter at Tub Tim said, “Thai time”. We stopped off at numerous other beaches until the boat was completely chockers then ran out of fuel halfway back to the mainland, so there we were bobbing around for 20 minutes or so until another boat pulled up to offer assistance. This would have been quite funny had we not had a long day of travel ahead of us and a plane to catch. Fortunately we had allowed plenty of time to get to the Rayong airport so made it onto the flight to Udon Thani in the far north east of Thailand, right on time.

By Rach and MattRead more