O, Koh Samet!

Koh Samet, formerly a home to pirates (it is still believed there is treasure buried here) is a five-square mile island in the Gulf of Thailand, designated as a national park in 1981 by the Queen.  Much of the central part of the island is in its natural wilderness state, but the coastline is lined with various small villages and resorts.  Amira chose our accommodations at the Le Vimarn Cottages & Spa on Ao Prao beach, the quietest and in our opinion loveliest of the beaches.


Our cottage, pictured below, was a spacious, airy, tree-house-feeling dwelling.

It was every bit as lovely inside,

with divine views from our porch.

We were simply surrounded by beauty, with exquisite attention to every detail of the landscape, from numerous ponds and fountains,

to gardens of lush foliage.

Our first day here was concluded with one of the three subsequent sunsets from heaven we experienced.  I don't think it's possible for the sun to set here without being transcendentally dazzling.

I'll spare you the approximately hundred other photos we took of sunsets (so smitten were we by the occasions), but here are a couple of the many postcard-perfect daylight views so sublime that even our iPhones were able to produce Google images-quality photos.

The beauty of the beach was only enhanced by the father-daughter duo thereupon.

Le Vimarn felt quite like what I felt in Juneau when I first saw a humpback whale breach in a float plane (it occurs to me to add that the whale was in the water, not the plane).  I realized that it wasn't until I actually saw the whale that I truly believed they existed - I had such a sense of awe that they were...real.  The Ao Prao harbor has had a similar effect - this kind of paradise was  only a fiction until arriving here, even though we had honeymooned on Bermuda, I had lived in Waikiki (when I was 19), and had swum in the Bay of Naples.  It was the tropical isle of my dreams - sheer tropical bliss.  I didn't know how we'd ever leave.

Although we did try on our second day here, with rather unfortunate results.  Stay tuned.