There are three ways to get from Koh Samui’s Cheong Mon beach to the private island home of Australian chef David Thompson’s new restaurant. The fastest is by powered dinghy; it’s a 30-second trip. The slowest is on foot, in daylight, if the tide is low and you know which route to take. But the best fun of all is to hitch a ride on the evening truck.

Yes, it really is a truck; a formerly land-based vehicle repurposed for ocean-going use with typical Thai ingenuity (and, one suspects, a certain disregard for the rules). You climb up onto a bench seat, hang on tight as the wheels bump and roll over the rocky sea-bottom, and wonder at the improbability of driving into the Gulf of Thailand.