Just a few short weeks after I arrived in Thailand, my friends and I planned a fabulous little get away over a long weekend we had. We were going to head to Koh Samet...an island that is a measly 11-14 hours away by bus and fairy from Khon Kaen.
James, Christina, and I hopped on a late bus around 8:00pm on Thursday night. We arrived in Bangkok at about 2:00am and made our way to a friend's apartment. We amused ourselves from 2 until about 5:30am when we decided it was time to go get breakfast a McDonalds! After a lovely feeding, we hopped into cabs with a few more new friends and headed to the bus station.
After being ripped off by a taxi driver, we caught a three hour bus to the sea side that left at 6:30am. Upon arriving, we hopped right onto a fairy to take us to the island. At this point James, Chrisina, and I have been up for over 24 hours. We were going strong though!
Upon arriving on the island we made our way by sawngtao on very bumpy, dirt roads. We caught glimpses of beautiful beaches outfitted with on beach restaurants and bars. The forests were lush and green filled with tropical trees. Upon arriving to a beach whose name I can no longer remember, with much help from our fearless leader Phil, we found our accommodations for the weekend. Our cabins were slightly shady, aircon-less, and small. Christina and I ended up staying in a cabin with a large bed and fairly scary, dark, damp bathroom. The bathroom had no hot water or sink. It had a Thai style squat toilet for us to use. We later found out that we shared our humble home with a mother kitty and her babies who were living above our ceiling. (I discovered this when one of the poor kittens fell from their perch under the roof onto our porch and made quite a fuss at 6am one morning.)
While we were less than please with our accommodations, they were cheap and just a stones throw from a beautiful beach. Our small cove had beautiful white sand, palm trees, and lovely blue water. Along with the beautiful natural surroundings, we had the comforts of two different restaurants, a bar, chairs and umbrellas for rent, and endless walking vendors selling their wares. Soon we were bathing suit clad and covered in sun block (it's incredible with the sun near the equator will do to poor, pale people like me).
Over the weekend I experienced a few firsts: 1) I had my first piece of fresh fruit delivered to me by a walking fruit salesmen (check out my photos of Koh Samet to see what I'm talking about); 2) saw my first beach side fire show; 3) experienced my first bucket of fun; and 4) enjoyed my first tropical island.
At the end of our adventure James, Christina, and I left early in the morning to catch what we thought was going to be a 9 hour bus ride home. After 12 hours of random stops and one viewing of the new Rambo move, we arrived back tired in our new hometown of Khon Kaen.
Pretty much everyone that was a part of our group was PIA. It was a lot of fun getting to know other PIAer's in such a beautiful, relaxing environment. We were quite a diverse group, but really enjoyed each others company.
Monday, November 3, 2008
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