Photo Clash

As what I experienced, posting images inside blog posts will slow down loading time, to avoid this, I made a brief summary of the travel and let the images explain itself in the Koh Samet photo gallery, or view the rest of the gallery here and make sure you open the full size for the best quality.

Woke up at 7:45 am took a shower and prepared myself for the journey, at 8, the the travel to Koh Samet begun. 4 people, 1 destination. The weather was quite cloudy on the way. We had lunch at the motorway and continued our journey. At an area after Pattaya it stated raining heavily and we started worrying although it lasted for about 10 minutes and it suddenly stopped and the sun was shining. It was Songkran days in Thailand which usuallly is the peak of summer although the weather nowdays became quite unpredictable, but we expected it to be a hot summer vacation. On the way we saw people splashing each other wildly and most of them drunk, maybe this explains my short description in Songkran Day photo gallery. After we reached Rayong it was cloudy again. At around 2-3 pm we reached the pier, we immediately booked 2 hotel rooms for about 1200 per room not quite in front of the beach, maybe around 30 meters away, but that rate includes air conditioning which I had highly demand as I was expecting hot weather and will be needing of some sort of cooling down. The non air conditioned room costs around 800 baht for 2 people I think. We had to leave the car behind because bringing a car to the island is prohibited AFAIK, so we parked overnight there by paying 60 baht. We paid 100 baht for round trip to the island by boat.

After we arrived, we had to pay another 20 baht for the island tax (it’s all about the money isn’t it?) anyway, the weather didn’t improve at all, so I took several pictures on the way, the lighting condition was bad. We went snorkeling and had great fun, I saw the beauty of the underwater world for the first time with a cheap snorkel kit bought in Big C for less than 300 baht and had to cope up with the water leakage from the end of the snorkel by taking it off after less than half a minute. I went back with an injured foot because of the sharp rocks on the surface.

I planned to shoot pictures of stars during the night because as I have learned, usually during the night in the beach, stars has great visibility. Unexpectedly, there was a storm while we were having dinner. Not finding any indoor restaurants, even if it exists, it would probably be too far from our hotel anyway, so we had to eat while raining (think rain water mixed with rice and barbequed fish) nice… . We decided to sleep early that night because of the terrible weather. I slept for awhile but woke up at midnight as I am not accustomed to sleep before midnight, and heard the rain stopped so I went out hoping for a clear sky with lots of stars. Nada, nothing, just a deep black sky which is clouds of course.

The next day, we went out trekking to discover the island, there were great panoramas. I took hundreds of pictures during the way but unfortunately, during the previous night I was showing the difference between high and low ISO speed and explaining the difference. High ISO speed means more sensitive sensor, more light, but more grain as well, lower ISO speed means high quality image with no noise but lack of light. I showed the high ISO speed last and I set the ISO speed to 400 and forgot to return it to ISO 200 which is the lowest ISO speed on my camera. So there goes, hundreds of grainy shots damn… . The gallery might not show the grain but the full sized image shows it although its not that bad, but I hate imperfections. Check out the Exposure/Camera settings on the gallery and if the ISO Equivalent says 400, those are the ones. On the way, we went to a clearer beach and went snorkeling again. Again, I had my other foot injured.

At 12, we arrived back in our rooms, took a shower and prepared the journey back. We stopped by at Pattaya and had lunch and took several panorama shots at a hill I forgot its name. I arrived back at around 8 pm. It was quite an experience, quite a disappointment but lots of fun. Thanks for reading, don’t forget to view the gallery here.

Regards,
Aditya Pamungkas

~ by adityapamungkas on April 16, 2006.