Koh Samet - travel diary

Transfer from Angkor Wat (Cambodia) to Kho Samet (Thailand)

Woken at the first light of the new day and quickly gulping down the usual breakfast of fried eggs, bread and jam with a fruit shake, we headed off to catch the bus to Poipet, the last Cambodian town before crossing over into Thailand. We had already been warned about the poor conditions of the route... well, we can only confirm it! The road we traveled to get from Siem Reap to Poipet does not deserve to be considered as such. Perhaps the term path suits it much better... it was a trip of "only" six hours, but they were six important hours, hard to forget. Most of the route was not paved, a rather narrow dirt path with an innumerable quantity of potholes. Of course the landscapes we passed through were of a unique beauty and managed in part to alleviate the jolts and sudden changes of direction of the bus.

Arriving in Poipet we crossed the border on foot and, having dealt with the usual entry procedures, we headed by tuk-tuk towards the first bus station we found. A stroke of luck (every now and then you need one!), the bus to Rayong was there waiting just for us. It wasn't easy to figure out that it was the right bus, since no one uttered a word of English. But in the end, thanks also to the proverbial Thai helpfulness, and a good dose of gestures, we reached our goal: Rayong. In reality Rayong was only a bus station that served us to get to the island of Ko Samet.

The days passed between underwater explorations and sunbathing; in the evening in just five minutes we could reach the so to speak social area, devoting ourselves to savoring excellent breakfasts and succulent dinners that certainly did not leave us unsatisfied. Even the weather conditions supported us throughout our stay: everything we were looking for we had found. There wasn't a single reason that would take us away from that place, but our commitments were calling us back to order; the time had come to leave the island: Bangkok was waiting for us. Our stay had been further extended by two days compared to our plans, all tied to the tranquility we had reached and the not exactly optimal conditions of the ankle of one of the members of the by now infamous "Back to the Zero Parallel" expedition, who thought it well to defile his body with a tattoo so fashionable here on the island.

Having packed our bags, we once again boarded to reach the mainland, and there a minibus that would take us to Bangkok.

Koh Samet

Having arrived in Rayong in the evening, we spent the night in a run-down dive, but this was all we could get since we arrived in the dead of night and all in all it was a "suffering" we could endure in view of the week we were about to spend on Ko Samet. The next morning we bought the ticket for the ferry: journey duration about half an hour. Disembarked as usual, the primary problem was finding accommodation... no small feat since we found ourselves in the middle of the festival that Thailand dedicates to the king's birthday.

Having hired the usual taxi driver, we set out in search of a bungalow: you couldn't find a place even if you paid for it in gold. We therefore decided to continue the search on our own by walking along the beach; here fortune aided us, thanks also to the directions that a friendly German tourist had given us upon our arrival. After a very long wait we found accommodation at the Silver Sand, a sort of tourist village equipped with bungalows, restaurant and nightclub, all artificially created to brighten the holidays of tourists. But already on the first night came its biggest and perhaps only flaw. You couldn't sleep because of the deafening noise coming from the nightclub. The next morning we decided to set off to explore the island in search of an isolated beach; our mission achieved the desired objective.

The sight was crazy: a beach on a human scale with soft white sand, but the best was yet to come. Having noticed the presence of a resort, we immediately went to inquire about their availability. Only one bungalow was left and we certainly didn't let the opportunity slip away; in a hurry we retrieved our luggage and moved. It was a picture-postcard place. Our accommodation was perched over the sea and offered a breathtaking panorama, especially at dawn and sunset; moreover, the owner was a sort of Yoko Ono devoted to yoga and Chinese medicine: we had found paradise.