When I got back from Chiang Mai, it was 2 in the afternoon, and I was dead tired. Pretty much no sleep at all that night. I was about to check into a hotel when I decided to see if there was any chance of still catching a bus to Ko Samet. After all, I would much rather sleep right next to the beach than in the middle of busy Bangkok. As it would happen, I was in luck, there was a bus leaving at 3 o'clock. It ended up coming at 3:30 (not an uncommon occurance here, my 9:50 train left at 10:25) and when I open the door, who happened to be sitting there was none other than Erik.

The bus ride (and when I say bus I mean in this case a mini van with about 9 seat in it) was just me, Erik and a guy from Calgary named Jayden whom Erik happened to meet the night before. The drive out was actually a good chance to see parts (at least from a distance) of BKK that were much nicer than the areas we stayed in. They had some incredible buildings in downtown. And above the highway we were driving on was another highway about the same level off the ground as our skytrains in Van. The traffic is quite bad in BKK even with this extra highway. Talking to a cab driver later, it was apparently a sign of Japanese and Thai friendship. I take it that means it was built by the Japanese, but I couldn't understand much more of what he had to say about it.

After about a 4 hour bus ride, we arrived at the Ko Samet ferry. It's about a half hour boat ride to the island of Ko Samet. The island itself is about 6 km long and not that wide. The East side of it has most of the sandy beaches and the beach side bungalows. The west is more rocky, with only one real sandy beach which has a couple of the more posh resorts here. Anyway, just as we get on the ferry it starts to rain, and the thunder and lightening start as well. Here is Erik, Jayden and I just before the rain got going. This is real rain, none of the piddly stuff we get back at home. To give you a bit of perspective, after about 30 minutes of it, I went across the street to get a bit to eat before we left, and the water on the street was past my ankles. There were also 6 or so Thais on the boat with us, and once the rain hit we all crawled into the front part of the boat to get shelter. it would have been a great picture, 9 people cramped into a tiny space, but unfortunately the rain and my camera are quite fierce enemies, and if they meet up, the rain can do some nasty things to my camera.

We finally arrrive in Ko Samet around 9 at night. After we grabbed some dinner (the squid and prawns here are so tasty), we went to grab a bungalow, figuring that since September is the off season, it would be easy to find one. While this is true, on the weekends (especially Saturday, which was the day we arrived), Thais and foreigners teaching English in Thailand like to come down for the weekend. So we spent about an hour trying to find a place. The place we finally settled on was a double, that had a queen sized bed for the 3 of us. we ended up sleeping fine width wise (Erik was probably the hardest pressed as he is about 4 inches taller than me), but it wasn't too bad. When I woke up, I found a fair bit of ants crawling on my backpack, but at least it was better that than inside my sleeping bag :)