Well I finally found out how to get to Koh Samaesan, think they were all trying to keep it a secret, first off you need to get to Sattahip, then drive to Samaesan which is a fishing village about 5km from Sattahip town center, now being a fishing village it has loads of piers for the fishing boats to unload their catches, now you would have seen the signs for "Thai Island and Sea Natural History Museum", that's where you want to go, the museum itself is a rip off for farangs, Thai price is 30baht to enter, farang price is 200baht to enter, anyway once inside the grounds follow the signs to the pier to catch a boat to Koh Samaesan, don't bother with a ticket for the museum.
The boats charge 250baht per person and leave between 9am and 2pm to get to the island, after that it's only boats coming back from the island.
There are several other islands there like Ko Kham, Ko Chuang and Koh Raet, I know they won't allow boats onto Koh Kham as that is where sea turtles lay their eggs.
Koh Raet taken from a temple in the mountains at Samaesan fishing village.
Here you can see a couple of boats at Koh Raet, I assume they are scuba diving boats taking lunch on the island.
A picture of Koh Samaesan.
2 of the islands together.
Lots of scuba diving trips round here from Pattaya as the water is clear and of course being a navy area where better to dump their old boats than near to where they are based.
The boats only go to Koh Samaesan Tuesday to Sunday, they did say to phone first to make sure boats were going that day due to high waves, I actually think the boats only go if there are enough customers and with this being so far off the beaten track and so over priced they probably don't get many customers, maybe had 5 cars in the museum car park when I got there and they are probably owned by people working there.
Telephone numbers.
038 432471
038 432473