Samet Island (Koh Samet), Thailand 2

Thailand

Ao Wong Duan

The decisions you make in like can sometimes be lasting ones. We didn't press on our first day, and consequently we just ended up staying at Wong Duan the whole time (OK, so it was only 3 days).

Wong Duan is a beach, and that's about all it is. Still, there were a lot of people on it not wanting any more than that. I wasn't among them, but it was an nice place to lay back in a lounge chair and relax.

	Wong Duan Beach seems to cater to a little older crowd. Most of the tourists manning the beach chairs were rather well fed, middle aged Europeans, some with Pattaya girls in tow. The local teenagers and twentysomethings were engaged in endless pickup games of beach soccer, as pictured here. Ours seemed to be the only kids on the beach. Where were the local children?
The water stays shallow for a while and the bottom is sandy, so it's a good bathing beach. We had a rain shower the first night and rain the third day, so the water was stirred up much of the time and I can't tell you if there was much to look at underwater or not.
	This was my fourth trip to Thailand, and I can say that the Thais seem to be genuinely friendly people. This group of college girls on holiday from Bangkok took up with my daughter Kelly, gave me and my wife a few hours to ourselves one day. The one in the hat had lived a year in the States and spoke English quite well.
There's no shopping or anything on the beach, and I never saw one dive shop the while time I was there, so beach chairs and restaurants are where most spend their time. This is one section of the cluster of beach restaurants in the center of Wong Duan. Of course you eat with your toes in the sand.
	At the southern end of the beach is the restaurant of the Villa, where we stayed the first two nights. It was pleasant eating right on the water under the trees, and the food was quite good. I especially enjoyed the hot coconut soup and coconut milk curry. Beef is typically tough in southeast Asian countries, we find, so we usually keep to chicken and shrimp for our meals.
And speaking of curry, this is the coconut curry I was served at the restaurant of the Malibu Resort (see next page for more). I thought the way it was served, in the dish with the flame below, was rather exotic. I'd had better curry, though. Still, in general, food in Thailand is a real treat that we always look forward to.
	It's rather rare to find a tourist development that faces the east, but that's the way it is on Koh Samet. Consequently, I don't have any sunset shots to include this time. Here we are looking south, and the building you can see at the end of the beach is the Wong Duan Villa that I showed you two pictures above.
As night falls, the barbecue grills come out on the beach on Koh Samet, as they seem to on most beach areas in Thailand. Of course there is always a selection of seafood, but I went for the shishkabobs a couple nights in a row. I inset a picture of them before they're grilled in the lower left of this picture, in case you're wondering what that is. The barbecue chicken with the hot Thai sauce is also great.
The next day I started hiking, exploring other beaches. The next page shows you what I found.