Thailand's east coast is a five-hundred-kilometre string of predominantly dull, grey beaches blotched with expensive, over-packaged family resorts, the largest and most notorious of which is Pattaya . Offshore, however, it's a different story: the tiny island of Ko Samet attracts backpackers and Bangkokians to its pretty white-sand beaches, while travellers with more time on their hands head east to Ko Chang , a large forested island close to the Cambodian border. It is now legal to cross over the border near here.