Originally Posted by
Chittychangchang
Lots of families here, i'd recommend getting a room on arrival as they're expensive on those booking sites.
White sand, warm seas, friendly locals.
Pics coming when I get a chance, life's a beach..
Friendly locals !!!!
Those fuckers are the meanest, most avaricious and commercially callous in the whole fucking region.
Three families control the entire island and most of the restaurants are really just one big fucking cooperative peddling mediocre shit at price-ringed levels. Are they still hoarding rubbish behind the Had Sai Khao beach where they farm mosquitos in the ponds of puddled lying water?
Koh Samet is a classic case of tearing the guts out of something without putting a damn thing back. In any decent society those families would be deported and replaced by proper hotels established within an environmentally balanced infrastructure that does not pollute or overcharge for shit accommodation that wouldn't cost 1600 baht in Bangkok.
For years the greedy buggers started laying tablecloths all over the beach at 1500hrs turning it into one giant alfresco restaurant replete with cushions and dinky little candle lit lamps for the punters to recline and admire the sunset and rising moon. The only trouble was that with all the spiltt food and other detritus they created fucking legions of lice, sandflies and fuck knows what else on the beach which means after a day or so lying on it you start getting bit like crazy.
When I remarked on the fact to our hotelier and showed him all the bites after a session on the beach he explained that "sun very hot now and all sandfly wake up early and come to the surface".
Koh Samet could be a paradise but left to the Thai........
With the Chinese mass market and the urban Bankgokian Thai coming down on weekends and holidays, and the high season marketing of the place as a party island to the vacuous young a la KPG , its turning in to a fucking nightmare.
Out of season, midweek and with no imminent public holidays it is bearable.