See Monkey Travel: Koh Samet: A Quick Trip to the Beach

We finally made it to the highly praised and popular weekend getaway from Bangkok: Koh Samet. An island off the eastern seaboard in the Gulf of Thailand, it's about a 3-hour drive from Bangkok to the pier and a 30-minute ferry or 15-minute speedboat ride to the island itself. It's risky to take a beach trip during rainy season, but we got lucky on Saturday and had a wonderful day being lazy in the sun. Sunday was overcast so we had breakfast on the beach and came home to finish the weekend in sunny Bangkok and prep for the new week ahead.

A very rainy drive to begin with.

We left Friday from work at 3:30pm, hopped into a minivan and drove away in what was a surprisingly smooth departure. 3 hours and 160baht later, we arrived in Rayong city where we planned to spend the night. We wandered around the vicinity of our hotel which was just like any other Thai town - lots of street food, minimarts, karaoke clubs, salons and plenty of dogs and cats to keep you company along the way.

View from our hotel in Rayong City.

We got up early to enjoy the hotel breakfast and made the journey to the pier where we had been instructed to "go to the right." If you go to the left pier, they charge you double and put you on a boat that drives around to the right pier and puts you on the same boat you would have boarded if you went right to begin with. Oh, how I love tourist scams.

Seen at the ferry pier.

We are at the little blue dot in the
bottom right corner.

Here are some photos from our quick first trip there. We're hoping to visit again soon and see more of what the island and surrounding area has to offer. Cheers!