An Island Trip

03/01/10

So, we had a long weekend due to a Buddhist holiday known to Thais as Makha Bucha. A group of my friends and I decided we’d take a long overdue trip to the island of Koh Samet. We took off on our journey early Saturday morning at 7 a.m. Since there were many of us, we’d rented a van to transport us round trip and then (as always) took a speed boat to the island. Aside from our unscheduled drop off of a certain unpaid member of the Rayong area causing our boat to have complications and not be able to run again, our weekend was rather uneventful. Or, perhaps, it was true only for me as I’d called it early on both of the nights we were there; none of the crazy, long nights of partying til the wee hours like I would normally do when I’m on this island. However, it was an enjoyable and relaxing weekend nonetheless. As it often happens, I’ve come back to the City of Angels with barely a tan.

We arrived to the island to find it was practically over-flowing with people! For the first time in the many times I’ve been to this particular island, I found it full of beautiful people. I shamelessly say the men were HOT! As always, I brought a book with me (both to read and to write). Sad to say, I didn’t get very much reading accomplished; or the writing. I did, however, manage to write a great piece of poetry right before leaving the island to head back to the real world we all know as life and work.

On our second and last night there, we had dinner at a place known to some as Unseen Samet. The name is very befitting of the place as not many people know of it. It is a restaurant that is far in a remote area of the island that many don’t even know exists. It sits out in the middle of the ocean (tho not very far from the coast). In order to get there, you must ring a bell from the mainland. This is done as a way of calling for a boat. Then you get into this motor-less boat that uses a pulley to transport you back and forth between the restaurant and the mainland (a couple of years ago, the pulley was manual labor, meaning you had to do the pulling; now it’s a motorized pulley). When you get to the restaurant, you sit on the floor at low-tables with your feet dangling (much like the ones Japanese restaurants are known for) and several feet below you is the sea. The tables all have glass tops and there are lights underneath the floor so that you could get a chance to see the sights in the sea beneath
you.

The water, this time was so dirty. It was full of seaweed and trash. The seaweed may have had something to do with the fact that there was a full moon and something to do with the tides, but the trash, that was horrible! Gotta blame it on the people—the locals and travelers alike. It was just awful. And sad, really. One of my girlfriends and I managed to take some of it out of the water. We found anything from parts of a broken (PVC) pipeline to a piece of sturdy rope to a big sack they use to pack rice with! At one time, all my friend did was swish her hand through the water and when she had pulled it out, there was a plastic bag stuck to it. We were so disgusted that we got out of the water. The pieces of trash we had managed to collect, we took them to their proper place in the bin for we knew that if we just left them on the shore, they would surely be washed back out to sea when the tide comes up in the morning. I didn’t take very many pictures this time around and now that I think about it, I wish that I’d taken some pictures of the trash and the seaweed so that you could have an idea what I was talking about.

Also for the first time ever that I’ve been to this island, I have had my very first room with a view (and a splendid view it was)! I had shared a room with two other girlfriends of mine. It was something like an attic with a queen-sized bed and two connecting twin beds, a refrigerator, a dresser, and even a vanity with a mirror! Our one window in the room faces the ocean. It was a great room! Pity that the owners of the place have money stuck up their arses so high that they’ve forgotten how to smile or to appreciate any business that their customers bring to them. The husband and wife team was rude to the point I almost gave them a piece of my mind and if it wasn’t for the fact that we’d have nowhere else to go (cuz all the other places were fully booked..two of my friends who decided to join us last minute had to spend the night in a tent!), I would have gladly walked out of there taking my friends and our money with us. You’d think that after having booked four rooms with them and paid them in full, the wife would not have made a comment like “Hurry up. He’s not gonna have time to take you to your rooms later.”

All in all, it was a good trip. If for nothing else, then for time well spent with some of the greatest friends a girl can find within the large cosmopolitan (and sometimes lonely) city known as Bangkok—the city of angels of the east.