I've never really been a beach person. The idea of sitting out in the hot sun, then yelping your way down to bone-chillingly cold water while trying not to burn the soles of your feet, then yelping your way back up to your towel (crowded among 10,000 of your closest friends' towels), while trying to keep shards of sand from sneaking their way up into your bathing suit... no thanks.
But, we were in Thailand, home to some of the best beaches in the world... and we weren't going to go?
We agreed to give it a try. Though we didn't have the time to get on a 20-hour bus to the famed beaches of the South, we could spare an overnight for a jaunt to Koh (or Ko) Samet, a beach idyll just four hours or so from crowded Bangkok.
First, though, sustenance for the trip. Our Bangkok hotel had a huge, generous, and actually pretty good breakfast buffet, so we loaded up.

The trip to Koh Samet was easy - first a bus to Ban Phe. The bus conveniently dropped us off right where boats leave for Koh Samet. Nice. We only waited fifteen minutes or so, looking out over the water with anticipation.

The boat ride was lovely - the water was calm, and we felt an actual breeze for the first time since leaving Bangkok. We were already getting into the swing of things, enjoying the crisp sunlight and the open skies.
The boat dropped us at Koh Samet's main port, Na Dan. This was a bit of a cluster, but not so bad - modified open-backed pickup trucks (actually, sawngthaews) waited to take you wherever on the island you needed to go. It was just a question of the drivers hooking you up with people going the same direction.
Transport on the island was basically simple. You pay rental for the sawngthaews to take you where you want to go. They usually like to wait until they have more people going, but are happy to take you by yourself if you're willing to rent the whole truck - which gets expensive.
We climbed aboard with a family of eight or so Thais, grandmothers down to grandchildren, and bounced our way along the road to our hotel, the Silver Sand in Ao Phai.

Koh Samet is a national park, so you have to pay an entrance fee once immediately outside of the main town. It's 40 baht for Thais and 400 for foreigners (now about $13, though it was $11 when we were there - I can't believe this stupid dollar!), which was a bit of a shock as it was double what both of our guidebooks reported.
Though it is a national park, there's a huge amount of development on the island. It's supposed to be sustainable development, but I'm not so sure that's the case.
Our arrival at the hotel wasn't particularly auspicious. The first bungalow-style room we were shown reeked of smoke and air freshener. When we marched back to the checkin to ask if they had other rooms available, the young man behind the counter said "well... we do have a room available, but it's by the creek."
Ooh, a creek! Lovely!
The creek turned out to be a rancid, stinky drainage ditch of some kind. We could see turbo mosquitoes hatching evil little plots inches away from the surface of the muck. The first room it would be, after a quick airing-out.
They did have a lovely little restaurant, though, shaded under an enormous tree with lanterns hanging here and there. And we were hungry. (I've compressed about five hours of travel into those two pictures up there.)

Having eaten, we immediately went and shed our lightweight linen and cotton clothing in favor of our bathing suits, and spent the next several hours luxuriating down by the water. Chair and umbrella rentals were inexpensive. Women came by offering massages or papaya salads or huge sarongs. I took one up on the massage, which just pushed all the travel knots out of my body.
When the sun started to go down several hours later, we returned to our room, showered, and headed out for an aperitivo at the on-beach bar run by the hotel.
I honestly don't think I've seen a prettier place to enjoy a drink.

I'm guessing the preponderance of bucket drinks on the menus of Koh Samet's bars is due to the island's popularity with tourists. Whatever, we just wanted a huge Singapore Sling. We shared it.

It was nice to be in a place where all there was to do was relax. I think I'm starting to see the draw of beach vacations, though I don't think I could handle more than a few days. I like my museums and history.
With the sun well and truly down, we went to an internet cafe to email friends and family, and then perused the menus at the different restaurants of Ao Phai. We ended up at Sea Breeze, with their enticing display of seafood. Yup, including barracuda.

We chose a pomfret and asked them to fry it, and settled into our table with a beer and a sigh.
It was pretty quiet still; the thumping of the low-rent eurotechno hadn't begun to blast from the beachfront bars.
Listening to the waves thump languidly against the beach, sipping our Thai beer, I really started to think that this beach thing might actually not suck.

Our fish arrived, doused liberally in a sriracha style chili sauce. Though it didn't approach the deliciousness of the snakehead fish of the nameless restaurant in Kanchanaburi, it was nicely fried and tasted like food on a beach vacation should.

After this flavorful meal, we were ready for some after-dinner entertainment! Most of the hotels were offering quasi-legal showings of movies that hadn't technically been released on DVD yet, but one place was offering a fire show. Wheee!
We sat back with a huge Mai Tai bucket and enjoyed the proceedings.

These guys went on for at least an hour, dousing and redousing their,um, tools... no... let's go with flaming balls (I really don't mean this to sound dirty, but I don't know what they're called) in jugs of kerosene set out for the purpose.
Here's a brief video we took so you can have the full experience. There was a disco party going on right behind us.
After enjoying the fire dance, we headed off to bed. I know you think we're all-night disco party people, so I hate to burst your bubble. We'd be heading back to Bangkok fairly early the next day, and I wanted a little more beach time.
We got it. Around 8:30, we had the beach in front of the hotel almost entirely to ourselves.

By the way, that boat you see in the foreground was picking people up to take them back to the mainland. This won't even be the last time in this post you hear me agitate for tiny luggage in Southeast Asia!
When we started to get hungry, fusion food saved our butts. It was apparently a little early for the strolling som tam vendors to be out, since there weren't any tourists beaching themselves on the sand just yet, but we were able to rustle up a guy who ran a crepe stand. We got him to make the menu's most interesting offering, a pork floss and chili paste crepe. I know, what? I'm telling you, pork floss is awesome.

Come midday, we packed our things up and caught another pickup truck back to the island's main pier.

An hour or so later, we pulled up to Ban Phe and tied on to a boat carrying ice. We'd all have to traverse the narrow, slippery isles of the ice boat and clamber up the pockmarked concrete step of the pier.
Hey, I did say there would be another warning about luggage size...
This was a serious pain in the ass, guys. The step we had to take out of the second boat was at about waist height - luckily there was a guy there to grab my backpack and give me a hand up.
Another four hours or so later, there we were, checking back into the Baan Sabai on Soi Rambuttri. We had an extra night there we'd paid for, and we weren't about to let that pass.
After a quick shower to wash off the dirt of travel, we went for a walk outside to find some dinner.
We ended up at one of the dime-a-dozen streetfood stalls off of the busy part of the soi. Hey, fine by me - we had some great luck at street stands!

Plus, the ambience can't be beat. These guys did a good morning glory dish, which is definitely a staple of my Thai diet that I miss back here in the States. They also did a pretty yummy stir-fried wide rice noodle, which we got to season ourselves with the requisite Thai condiment tray - sugar, fish sauce, vinegar, chili.
I love this picture.

I had wanted to do some shopping in the inexpensive clothing stores up and down the streets near Khao San Road, so we wandered into a few. Most of this stuff is not well made, but it's usually wonderful for the heat, lightweight cotton in nice bright patterns, and you can find some real bargains. I bought an adorable sundress for $8.
I suppose there are some perils to running a clothing store in a land where it's always steaming hot.

Flush with my new purchase, we retired to the VW Bus bar to have a drink before bed. Yeah, I have no idea either. It's a bus! With a bar in it! They had a huge drinks list, 200 drinks or so, with one failing - the exotically-named concoctions didn't have their ingredients listed next to them! So we just picked a couple that sounded good and went with them.
I think mine, the "bee's knees", had gin, honey, and lemon in it. Not bad.

The moral of this long and twisted narrative is that if you're in Bangkok for a few days, you should definitely head to Koh Samet, especially if you don't have enough time to make it to the beaches of the far South. It's a great break from the hectic dirtiness of Bangkok, and you can get there in just a few hours.
Then you too can come back and have drinks out of a bucket from the back of a VW bus. Why not?