Ko Samet Beaches – Thailand

After about ten days in Bangkok, I was about ready for a change of scenery and since I was planning on taking a ten day course not too far from Bangkok in about six days, I decided to head to the Ko Samet beaches to burn some time instead of staying in the city.

Our ride to the Ko Samet beaches... A bit rough around the edges and you were never really sure if the boat would make it, possibly forcing you to have to swim with your bags back to shore

Finally making it to the Ko Samet beaches

Ko Samet is one of the nearest beaches in relation to Bangkok and a popular destination for a lot of travelers who are in Bangkok for only a short amount of time but still want to get to the beach.

Walking the Ko Samet beach at night...

Chang. The beer of Southeast Asia

Official taxi service for Ko Samet beaches!

My friend and I took the next bus that was headed to the island. We arrived to the city about three hours later then took a boat to get to the island. Since we were winging the entire trip, we just arrived and spend the better part of four hours trying to find a place to stay. After lugging our bags around this entire time, we ended up right back to the very first place we looked at. Ridiculous I know but sometimes that is how it is.

Ko Samet is a relatively small island when compared to a lot of other Thai islands but its just big enough to give it some diversity with the majority of people and shops on the southwest coast as the opposite side is much more remote. During the day, there really isn’t too much to do other than to lie on the beach. There were some things you could do such as take a boat out for the day but as far as snorkeling or diving, this really wasn’t the type of beach for that. At night however, the Ko Samet beaches are transformed. All the restaurants and bars along the beach would set up tables and lounge chairs along the water’s edge and there would be fire shows every night as well as people either setting off fireworks or lighting luminaries and sending them off into the night sky. Below is a short video I took of one of the fire shows. These guys were amazingly talented and many of them seemed to be between the ages of 15 – 20. There is also a bar there that holds Muay Thai boxing matches. We ended up catching a fight on the very first night we arrived. There were three matches and all were extremely entertaining as the sport is even more dynamic than traditional boxing matches and most of the fighters were relatively young.

After a couple days on the island and following much of the same routine, we decided to explore a bit of the island and decided to explore the other end of the island and catch the sunset there since the sun sets on the opposite the side of the beach we’d been on. We found an area of rock outcroppings along the coastline and spend a couple hours waiting for the sun to dip below the water.

Sunset on the opposite side of the island

There was some additional bumming around for a couple more days but we were soon headed back to Bangkok to catch the bus to a meditation course we would be taking for the next ten days. Yeah, you heard right… I was headed for Monk training and this would definitely be an experience to remember! I think I will soon miss these Ko Samet beaches in this upcoming isolated experience!!