RAWBangkok

Koh Samet is a small island just a short boat ride away from Bang Phe, south east along the Gulf of Thailand from Bangkok. I went there last weekend for my third trip to the island (with the third different girl) across three years. Each trip has been a virtual carbon copy of the other two.

Getting there is easy. A one-way bus ticket from Ekkamai Station is just over 160 baht, and it’s a 3 ½ hour ride to Bang Phe, then a wait of 20 minutes or so until you can hop a 50-baht ferry for a 35 minute ride out to the island.

It’s possible to get a speedboat for about 250 baht per person, and on my first trip to the island that’s exactly what I did. The trip takes about ten minutes one-way in the speed boat, but these days the 25 minutes difference in time just doesn’t seem worth the extra 400 baht for two people.

The island has some up-market accommodation but even when I was spending Australian money back in 2005 I stayed in the budget bungalows on the island. They are decent quality, and well positioned for an enjoyable beach holiday. My accommodation of choice is Jep’s Bungalows, and that’s where I headed this past weekend.

The trip was a last minute decision. Due to the funeral activities for the Princess, the go go bars were closed, but it was fairly late in the week before that was absolutely clear. On Thursday afternoon my favorite go go dancer called me to say that she had three days off, and wanted to know if I was interested in doing anything with her.

Her timing was perfect. I had Friday completely free, and had just received an email from a client canceling our weekend appointment. I had the same three days free.

I suggested getting away to a beach somewhere, and she said that her choice would be Koh Samet.

Perfect! We arranged to meet at Ekkamai bus terminal at 11 a.m. on Friday.

One of the many things I like about my favorite go go dancer is that she is rarely late for an appointment and she’s able to wake up in time to do things in the mid-morning. This is no mean feat. I’ve seen many go go dancers who can’t crawl out of bed much before 4 in the afternoon. I normally call them to make sure they are up and around if we have an appointment before noon.

But I trusted mfggd, and she didn’t let me down. She appeared at the bus station at ten past eleven, which, by Thai standards is right on time. We had some rice and noodles for lunch then hopped on the noon bus.

After bus and boat, we arrived on the island just before 5 p.m. and then hopped a songteaw to Jep’s Bungalow. (A songteaw is a pickup truck – or ute – with two benches in the back. It acts as a cheap taxi in most parts of Thailand). It’s necessary to enter a national park, and I paid the entrance fee – 20 baht for my Thai girl and 200 baht for myself. This split pricing is common in Thailand.

Arriving at Jep’s I approached the counter and was told what I expected to hear. No rooms available. I had called in the morning and been told the same thing.

First I asked for a room with hot water and a fan for 500 baht per night. It’s winter and I don’t need air conditioning. The guy said he had no fan rooms at all, but had limited availability on A/C rooms.

The guy said that he could give me a room on Friday night but not Saturday.

I’d been through this on the island before and didn’t panic. “Do you know anywhere where I can get a room for both nights?” I asked. I expected a protracted conversation, but he simply looked like a thought suddenly occurred to him and he said, “Okay, I can give you air con room for two nights” and that easily it was done.

The AC room price can be as low as 1K baht in the winter, but he asked for 1,500 per night and I paid it. Basically, the extra 2K (for two nights) versus the price of a fan room was just lack of aggravation premium. We were on the island for about 30 hours and didn’t turn the air con on at all.

The only real aggravation at Koh Samet is the mosquitoes that will eat you alive for about 2 hours around sundown. If you’re not in the water, the best thing to do is to spray some mosquito killer in your room, lock it up tight and hide there until darkness fully descends.

That’s not what we did. We smeared mosquito repellant on our skin and went outside. It slowed the skeeters down, but didn’t stop them.

On Friday evening, and again on Saturday, we ate out on the beach; and I mean literally on the beach. There are a dozen or more restaurants on the island that put out bamboo mats on the beach, with a low wooden table and some hard cushions, providing food service on the sandy beach just a few meters from the lapping waves.

The seafood is abundant and delicious. On Friday night we ate grilled scallops in the shell, a couple of decent sized crabs, some broiled fish and several bottles of Singha beer.

Out on the beach there are people walking around selling special lanterns. My girl told me the name, but I’ve forgotten already. Basically, if you can picture something like a hot air balloon in the shape of a soda can and about the size of a small adult. These are made of white cloth on a light wire frame. You light a flame (a fuel soaked rag) at the bottom. The flame fills the ‘balloon’ with hot air, and the floating lantern rises up into the night sky. The lanterns rise up slowly and float away on the wind.

When one goes up it is interesting and attractive. When several are being released at about the same time up and down the beach the night sky fills up with these flaming floating lanterns and it’s absolutely beautiful.

On Friday night there were lanterns being released intermittently, but on Saturday night they were taking off regularly from all along the beaches of the island and the night sky looked like it was populated with dozens of new large yellow stars.
In front of many restaurants there was some sort of entertainment. Near Ploy Taleh Restaurant there was a fire show each night, with bare-chested Thai men spinning and juggling fire sticks to the loud beat of drums. I’d seen the show before and it was fun to see it again.

Freshly cooked seafood, lapping waves, live entertainment and the lanterns floating up to the heavens drifting on the breeze made for a gentle, enjoyable and romantic atmosphere on the island. I was totally relaxed.

Friday night was moonless before midnight, but on Saturday the moon rose around 8 p.m. fat and yellow. It was giant and round as it peaked over the horizon, and I had a hard time convincing the go go dancer that it was the moon. She was astonished when she finally believed me, and wanted to know why it was so big.

I tried to explain the refraction of the light through the thick atmosphere near the horizon but the penny wasn’t dropping for her. She was thrilled with how beautiful the fat lazy moon was, though, and actually took several photos.

On Saturday we got up around 8 a.m. and had a free buffet breakfast on the beach, then spent the next several hours relaxing in the shade of a large umbrella and swimming intermittently.

Around 1 p.m. we walked down the beach until we found a likely place for lunch. Afterward we rented a motorcycle and went for an explore of the island.

Arriving back at the bungalow around 5 p.m. we went into mosquito avoidance mode, and took showers, then had sex until around 7 p.m. After the sex it was down to the beach for our seaside dinner, then back to the room for more showers and sex.

She was keen to wake up early and go out to the beach to watch the sunrise, so I set my alarm. However, when it went off at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning she wanted to know nothing about getting out from under her warm covers in the middle of the night.

We actually slept in till nearly ten o’clock before going down for a late and leisurely brunch.

The meal lasted until nearly noon. We went to the hotel concierge and booked a speedboat tour for the afternoon, then went back down to the beach, and enjoyed some Thai massage in the shade from low hanging tree branches. The massage was cheap at 200 baht for an hour, and a nice way to kill a spare hour.

Soon enough the speedboat arrived. This would be our last activity before heading back to Bangkok, so we put all our bags aboard the boat, and headed out into the sunny afternoon.

The trip lasted three hours, with a tour around the island that included two stops for snorkeling. The cost was an economical 350 baht per person.

My girl had told me that she’d tried snorkeling once before, but found it impossible to breathe through her mouth and panicked every time she tried. She said she wouldn’t be doing it today, but when the guy handed her a mask and everyone else headed for the water she decided that she’d have a go.

IN the water, her panic returned. She can swim and is not afraid of the water, she just kept trying to breathe through her nose. She wanted to get back on the boat.

Instead, I suggested she just float with me. We were both wearing life jackets, so it was pretty easy. I hugged her loosely so we were both upright in the water, and helped her calm down. I told her to just relax, and I would hold her. She could dip her mask into the water and look down, and as soon as she felt uncomfortable, she could simply look up again.

It worked. Over three or four minutes she started to understand how to breathe through her mouth, and became fascinated with the coral and live fish she could see under the water. Soon we were floating on out tummies, just holding hands and eventually she went off on her own to explore.

We both had a blast.

I’ve been SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Compared to that the monochrome coral and minimal number of tropical fish around Koh Samet is not too exciting, but being with someone who is really seeing it all for the first time made it really enjoyable.

And there was no time pressure. Between the two stops we had about an hour in the water, which was nice.

On the way back to the island we stopped at some sort of fish farm. I found this stop boring, but my girl was enthusiastic and even took a lot of pictures of the fish.

Finally the speed boat dropped us back at the ferry wharf, where we waited to go back to the mainland. The ferry got underway around 5 p.m. and on arrival we went to the bus station where we had a choice of leaving on the 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. bus.

My girl wanted to get a shower first, so we booked seats for seven and walked 50 meters or so to the back of the large parking area near the bus station. For three baht per person you could use the toilet facilities, which included a shower head pumping a slow stream of cool water.

We both showered and put on fresh clothes, then found a restaurant next to the bus station and ordered some tasty Thai food that was very cheap (by Bangkok standards anyway) and came in surprisingly large portions.

Just before buying our tickets I had seen some large farang guy who appeared to be blocking my path and grinning stupidly at me. It turned out that he was grinning stupidly at my favorite go go dancer. This is one of the hazards of going somewhere with a go go dancer.

Turns out she knew him quite well. They exchanged pleasantries and then we went off to the shower while he hopped the 6 p.m. bus to Bangkok. He initiated a steady stream of SMS messages throughout the three hour ride back to Bangkok.

He was with his own girl and returning from Samet, and his messages were fairly innocuous, mostly asking about a different girl who works at the same bar as my favorite go go dancer. She let me read them all, and told me that she’d never had sex with this guy… he was just an old regular at her bar whom she hadn’t seen in many months. I have no idea whether this was true, but his messages to her were consistent with that version.

In an aside, I went to her go go bar last night, and was buying her drinks. She was onstage dancing when I saw this same fellow walk in. He sat just a few meters away from me, but appeared not to notice me or recognize me.

When her dance set ended, she had the good sense to come over for a cuddle with me, then mentioned that he was in the bar, and asking if she could go say ‘hi’ to him. Yeah, no problem.

Not long after that, I paid her bar for her last night. By this time he’d chosen another dancer – it seems that his favorite girl had already been barfined. We managed to get through the evening without doing any more than waving at each other when my favorite go go dancer pointed us out to each other.

While I’m on the subject, I may as well extend the story a little bit beyond just Koh Samet.

My favorite go go dancer wants to travel overseas for a holiday with one of her other customers who lives in Europe. She asked me to help her fill out the visa application, and we agreed that we would work on it together on Saturday afternoon (yesterday).

You may remember from an earlier blog that I am staying at a friend’s apartment and sleeping on his sofa for three weeks while I am between apartments, moving from Ratchada to Sukhumvit.

My favorite go go dancer came to his room on Saturday. By previous arrangement I had gotten an outdoor grill, burgers, chicken and some other food. We spent an hour or so on the visa application, then I fixed a good old fashioned Western BBQ on the balcony for the three of us.

She should have gone off to work at 5 p.m., but hung out until nearly 7:15. By then she was already late for work, but decided to go in. I walked with her to the BTS, and since I had some business I had to take care of in Nana area, I rode there with her on the BTS.

She reminded me that I had promised to burn a CD with all the photos I had of her from the past few months. After taking care of my business in Nana, which took only a few minutes, I returned to my buddy’s house and made the CD.

I was around 11 p.m. when I finished making the CD last night, and I decided to go to Nana and give it to her. It was on this trip to her bar that I saw the guy from Samet Island.

She’d been at work for about three hours, but there was a birthday party on for one of the dancers and she’d been drinking heavily. She was pretty well three sheets to the wind when I arrived.

Instead of just dropping off the CD and going home as I’d planned, I hung around and talked with her, in part because I was concerned about how much she seemed to have had to drink. She normally doesn’t drink quite so much.

It turned out that she was a bit concerned about the business of going overseas with the other customer. She was worried that I might be angry, and she actually started crying. I told her not to worry, and helped her relax. I reminded her that I am a customer and not her husband, and that I know how she earns her living. I suggested that a trip abroad would be great fun for her, and encouraged her not to be concerned about me. In a way, the gentling that I gave her was reminiscent of the snorkeling at Koh Samet.

As I mentioned earlier, I paid her bar last night, then took her outside an hour or so before closing time. I only planned on getting her in a taxi and sending her home.

As we stood on Sukhumvit Road, she excused herself, and in a very ladylike fashion, crouched down on the curb, and gently vomited liquid into the gutter for about a minute. I crouched beside her and waited until she was done.

We agreed then that it would be better to get to a hotel, since she lives far away from Nana.

We walked up Soi 3 to the PB hotel. I’d never been there, and she only knew it by reputation and stopped three or four times to ask directions. I’ve read about it on the FS2M blog, where Smitty often says it’s his favorite short time hotel.

Arriving there, we were told that the 1,000 baht per night rooms were all full. They had an outdoor “inn” however (of the hotel-no tell variety) and we took a room there, 540 baht gave us the room until noon.

It was a typical hotel of this type with a round bed, mirrored ceiling, genealogical exam chair, air con, TV and toilet with hot water.

I went into the toilet to pee, and when I came out my favorite go go dancer was face-down in the cute dress she’d worn to my place for our afternoon lunch and she appeared to be passed out.

With the AC on it was cold, so I put the two blankets on over the two of us and went to sleep.

I woke her up around 11:30 and we left the short time hotel at noon. She was tired and hung over, so we hopped in a taxi aiming to return home – me to my buddy’s room and her to her room.

On the way though, she fell asleep in the taxi with her head on my lap. I told the driver to forget about dropping me first, and to simply take us to her place. I’d never been there before but I had the address on her visa application which I was carrying.

When we arrived I only planned on getting her in the front door and grabbing another cab home, but she pulled me in. We arrived at her room around 1 p.m. just as her room mate was getting into the shower.

While the room mate showered (no fantasies boys, she’s a deeply unattractive and hugely fat girl who works in a factory) I got my favorite go go dancer tucked into bed. I told her to sleep well, kissed her goodbye and left for home.

I hadn’t been gone four minutes when my phone rang. I guess the roommate had gotten out of the shower, asked where I was, and when mfggd told her I was going home, the roommate scolded her. My girl was calling me to ask me to come back. After a moment’s hesitation I did just that.

I’d met the roommate a few weeks ago, and I think she likes me because she knows I’m always good to her friend.

She smiled to see me, then went out the door, returning ten minutes later with two bags of fresh fruit for us. She then left again, this time apparently for good.

The two of us ate a bit of fruit, then laid down to take a nap. I drifted off surprisingly easily, and woke up around 5 o’clock. My girl pulled out a low table and started preparing some spicy Isaan food, which we ate together.

If you’ve never seen a go go girl’s apartment, this one was very typical.

At about 30 m2, it is a tight fit for two people. There is one double bed in the room, but two wardrobes for hanging clothes. There is a small balcony devoted almost entirely to drying clothes, with several potted plants as well.

Inside, there is an aluminum cabinet for cooking paraphernalia that seems to be ubiquitous in design and function for bar girl apartments. It is beside a small blue refrigerator full of vegetables, soft drinks and water.

The balance of the room is stuffed full in every spare inch with personal belongings. There is a small set of speakers for a hidden music player of some variety, a medium sized TV and a DVD player. There is a tiny workdesk that holds a telephone virtually unseen behind stacks of books and papers.

There is a ceiling fan in the middle of the room, handmade decorations hanging from the ceilings and small girly decorations pasted on the walls.

The room is in good repair but in need of a fresh coat of paint. The apartment is clean, though a bit dusty, but organization is not really very good, with too many things crammed into too little space.

There is water in only one space: the bathroom. The toilet room is about the size of a large closet, with a sit down toilet. It has no cistern for automatic refill and flushing, so there is a 20 gallon trash can in the room which is full of water, along with a bowl for scooping water into the toilet.

There is a tap for water that is used to refill the cistern, washing your hands and also supplies any water needed for cooking. The shower is a hose coming from the wall with a hand held spray head, and shower water simply lands on the floor and runs down a drain in the corner. There is no hot water.

To prepare our dinner, my girl did what I’ve seen dozens of Thai girls do. She put a small low table out, then put her mortar and pestle on the floor. Food is in plastic bags that are set on the floor, but all dishes are put on the low table.

As food is prepared, it is scooped into the dishes on the table, and everything is wiped clean as we go. Once all the food is ready we sit cross legged on the tile floor and eat the food that is stacked on the low portable table.

If you walk into a room full of Thai girls eating together the scene will usually be the same, except that there will usually be a bamboo mat on the floor instead of the low table. Thais (at least the Isaan variety) spend a lot of time sitting on tile floors.

When we’d finished our dinner my favorite go go dancer looked achingly at the clock and said that she had to get a shower and go to work.

I told her that if she didn’t want to go I’d pay bar for her again tonight. She was thrilled.

She got her shower, then came back to the room. She called her room mate who said that she wouldn’t be back before 9 p.m., so we had a couple of hours free. We had a bit of relaxed sex that didn’t get the sheets messy, then as she started looking sleepy, I suggested that I should go home and let her sleep.

She agreed, but then she asked me if I had enjoyed my visit and if I liked her room. I answered yes to both. In fact her room is very pleasant… quite cool and comfortable for relaxing and sleeping.

She spoke enthusiastically about fixing lunch for me and her room mate, and maybe some other friends at another time in the near future, and asked if I’d come.

Sure, why not?

Then she confided to me that she’d never had a male friend to her room before, but said that she’d be happy if I’d come again. I promised I would, kissed her good night and headed for home.

She lives about a ten minute taxi ride away from the place where I am sleeping this week, but I’d been lazing around in bed all day, so I decided to walk home. I was feeling energetic so I set a quick pace, and it took just over an hour to get back to my buddy’s apartment.

There was quite a bit of leftover chicken and vegetables from yesterday’s barbeque feast, so I ate up what was left as my friend and I watched a DVD.

I was just about to turn off the movie and go to sleep on the sofa when my phone rang; it was my favorite go go dancer. I’d left her tucked under the covers in her room 4 hours earlier. She said that she’d been asleep the whole time. She was calling to say thank you and good night.

I wished her sweet dreams, turned off the TV, cut off the lights and laid down to sleep.

It was probably the afternoon nap that did it. I simply couldn’t sleep, so after fifteen minutes or so I grabbed the computer and decided to write the blog entry for Koh Samet. It’s now about 3 a.m. I have to make my first business appointment at 9 a.m. tomorrow, which means waking up around 7:15, so I’m keen so sleep. Hopefully, after I press “submit” I’ll be able to crash.

Sweet dreams wherever you are.