KO SAMET
Last weekend I went to Ko Samet with Spencer - a quiet little island in the Gulf of Thailand about a 4 hour bus ride from Bangkok. Of course, you can’t get to the island on the bus, so we hired a speed boat late Friday night, along with a couple of Brazilian models (no, we didn’t hire them, we shared the fare - ooh la la). The boat zoomed us out to the island in the darkness, right to the bungalows we wanted to stay in, and brought us close enough to shore so we could jump out and wade onto the beach. Friday night we stayed in a cute little bungalow tucked into the trees on a hill, just up from the beach. We explored our little beach and saw a few flame dancers, but it was surprisingly quiet for the “party” section of the island.

Saturday morning after a nice little run (I’m willing be bet NOBODY else on the island got up and went for a run. Most people sat at the edge of the white sand beach and drank pineapple smoothies or got thai massage laying on their towels). Then we rented another scooter (this one only 110 cc and $7/day with gas included) and headed off to explore the island. The island is only a few km in length with 1 “road” running from tip to toe. The road really more like a dirt track that heads directly up and directly down small mountains dense with vegetation. Talk about extreme scootering! In each little valley there was access to another white sand beach, another little group of bungalows, another rocky outlook to the ocean.... We had a wonderful time exploring and nobody even got hurt in the scooter crash.





We spent Saturday night at another little beach, lounging at a little bar at the edge of the water drinking buckets of the nightly special and playing connect four until the bar closed. What a tropical paradise!









On Sunday, we rode the ferry back to the mainland ($1.50) which seemed to be a re-vamped fishing boat that could hold about 15 people, and then caught the bus back to Bangkok. I definitely realized here that I am a fish at heart and miss Lake Superior. I could spend the rest of my life on a beach, I think.

Kanchanaburi

This weekend Spencer and I went to Kanchanaburi, which is a town of about 80,000 people to the west of Bangkok. The town is just to the east of the mountains which separate Thailand from Mynamar (Burma). After school on Friday I took a tiny truck to the skytrain, met up with Spencer (who works at the other campus out of town) and we took the skytrain to the end of the line. Then we took a cab to the bus station and took a bus (we got there 10 minutes before the 4:00 bus left) to Kanchanaburi – a 2 hour trip. Note – getting around Bangkok is always complicated and involves many modes of transportation.

We ate pad thai at a street vendor and took a tuk tuk (a little 3 wheeled vehicle with a roof, like a cross between Mr. Bean’s car and a scooter) to the river. We stayed at a little guest house right on the river – the rooms were actually floating on the river like giant pontoons. Very beautiful to wake up in the morning and sit out on the porch surrounded by water flowers. This is a picture of the view from the pourch.

Saturday morning we went for a run and ended up running across the famous Bridge Over the River Kwai where our POW soldiers were forced to build the Death Train Railway and so many died.


After that we rented a scooter (hardly anybody drives motorcycles here, just 100cc scooters) for $4 and filled the tank for $2 and headed out to Erawai National Park, 70km away. Very beautiful scenery with the mountains to our left and lots of bush around us. It felt strange because the last time I rode a motorcycle I wore boots, a major helmet, long pants, a thick leather jacket, gloves…and this time I wore my tank top, sandals, and a little plastic helmet like a beefed up baseball helmet. Ha ha! We drove very safely though, mom, and the only real danger was avoiding all of the soi dogs that just lay in the middle of the road.

Erawai National Park is known for its huge waterfalls and caves. We went to a 7 tiered waterfall that was spread out over 2 km with a little trail leading up up up through the brush – beware of the tigers! The tech guy at our school saw one here while camping out last year. I didn’t see any, though. But the falls were very beautiful – the water was an opaque blue that you see only in photographs, and each of the 7 levels (we stopped at all of them and swam in most) was a bit different. Some you could slide down, some you could go under, some were very tall and some shorter and wider.







This photo is of a shrine - a giant tree wrapped in all sorts of fabrics with food offerings - very interesting. This is a popular place for Thai tourists to come and swim, but the farther up the falls we went the less people we saw. It felt very good to be out in the bush, a big difference from Bangkok, and swimming in such great water.









After the park closed, we feasted on more great vendor food – a pile of white rice and scoops of interesting looking meats and vegetables, frozen watermelon drinks and thai ice tea for $1.

On Sunday we headed home – catching another bus, for which we had to wait 15 minutes, and it put us out another $2. Kanchanaburi was a very nice city, with so many more caves and waterfalls to explore, I think for sure I will be going back in the next few months.