Part of the fancy hotel experience was a special pier, with parking and a speed boat to the island. Koh Samet is not far off the eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand (Vivian had some golf vs. gulf confusion in the car, so hopefully we've clarified things now). You drive to the area near Rayong, and then you can take a boat to the island. There's a ferry boat that's easy and not very expensive, but Ao Prao is part of the Samed Resorts group, and they have a special pier and special boats. The Ao Prao is on a little bay on the west side of the island, so it's about a 10 minute speed boat ride to get there. When we got to the waiting area, they gave us stickers that said Ao Prao to make sure we got on the right boat. The boat trip was a fun start to our vacation.
They even had toddler size life vests.
Jeff said Elena was latched on to his shirt. She wasn't so sure about the speed boat. We all made it though, and so did our luggage. We pulled into the bay where there are three resorts.
Ours was on the far end, and to get there we walked by the Lima Coco resort where some of our friends were staying. There were only three resorts in that bay, so even though there wasn't a lot of beach, it wasn't crowded, which was great.
We got checked right in and taken to our "cottage" which was very nice and spacious. We got a kick out of the notice we found on the desk area.
It made me wonder if durian smell is as hard to get rid of as cigarette smell.
After exploring the room, we went out onto the balcony, took some pictures, and headed right to the beach. The water was nice and warm and quite shallow. We were able to walk out easily. We also walked down the beach to visit with our friends. Their group of kids was working on digging a giant hole (perfect beach activity!), so Vivian joined in to help. We played for a while, and then headed back to the play area in front of our resort, where the girls had fun for a while. To wrap it all up, we went to one of the pools at our hotel to swim around a bit. Elena was not a big fan of the sand, but she enjoyed the ocean, and she loved the pool. Jeff took Vivian in to get her cleaned up, and I stayed at the pool a little bit longer with Elena. It was an infinity pool, and Elena loved leaning on the wide wall along the edge of it. It wasn't a big pool, but we had it all to ourselves, which was nice.
We had some time before dinner, so we let the girls play inside, and Jeff and I sat on the balcony to enjoy wine with the sunset. It was lovely. For dinner, they had a special on grilled kebabs, which they were cooking over an open charcoal fire, so we picked that. It was good, but after the day's adventures, the girls were done, so we didn't linger over dinner. Ironically, it was Vivian who crashed before 8:00pm, while Elena, who hadn't napped that day, kept insisting "No feep! No feep!" Until she finally crashed out on our bed.
We had been hoping to make it to the 8pm "fire dancing" show on the beach in front of our hotel, but when I realized it wasn't going to happen, I sent Jeff out to take some pictures. He enjoyed it and had fun doing some long exposures with his camera to get fire effects.
The next day we were up and running around 6:30am. We got the girls ready, and then went onto the balcony to say good morning to the beach.
Elena kept saying, "Wow! Wow!" and I think that pretty much sums it up. There were pancakes for breakfast which made both girls happy, and then we went back to the beach.
The day before we had scoped out the best beach spot for us. There were some chairs under a tree for shade.
And it was right next to the play area.
The waves came right up to the chairs, so I could sit with my feet in the sand and watch Viv be crazy in the waves.
The girls also undertook several play area projects. Elena appeared to have gotten over her sand issues and really liked hanging out in the little area under the slide.
She even set up a sand shop with Vivian providing regular deliveries.
But their favorite activity was digging a hole and carrying over water in a bucket to fill up the hole. They took turns digging and retrieving water.
When it was Elena's turn to get water, I hovered nearby, afraid that a wave would take her or the bucket or both out to sea. She managed to do a fairly good job of it, even though the bucket was never actually full. The cutest was when they paused for a status check.
Eventually, they decided they were done with that, and Jeff took them out into the water to get some of the sand off.
Elena liked bobbing up and down on the little waves that came in. After a while, she ended up at the chairs with me having a snack, while Jeff and Vivian went exploring the rest of the bay with our friends. It was quite a setting for snack time.
My little OCD baby realized that there were four holes on the table, and so she wanted a snack for each hole.
We did that for a while until I could tell she was getting tired, so I took her back to the room for a rest. Of course, she didn't nap, but I at least got her to chill out on the sofa with a bottle. It started to rain, and I found out later that Vivian and Jeff had been swimming in the waves while it was raining and having a great time.
It was done raining by the time they got back, so we got changed and went to the hotel restaurant for lunch. There were trucks that could take you to the other side of the island where there were more restaurants,
but our friends had done it the night before for dinner, and they said that while the beach area was bigger, it was VERY crowded and not very enjoyable, so we decided to stick to our little bay.
It turns out it was a good choice, because crazy toddler had no interest in sitting at the table. We took turns eating lunch and chasing her around. Luckily, it was beautiful no matter where you were sitting.
That evening, for sunset, Jeff and Vivian went on a photography walk to try and get some good pictures. She had her indestructible camera, and he, of course, had his fancy one. She got some good pictures, but his are my favorite, because she's in them.
By the time it got dark, we were pretty worn out, and Elena had not napped for the second day in a row, so we decided the best plan would be room service and a movie.
It was nice to just relax and hang out together. The girls went to bed pretty smoothly again, and we got up early enough the next morning for a little more play time at the beach and the pool, before catching the speed boat back to the mainland and driving home. It was a fun and easy beach getaway, and definitely a good one to do with visitors who want to see a pretty beach, but don't want to get on another plane after flying half way around the world.
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