Gulf Coast

Coming from our deserted beach with 6-8hour electric every day, it was a shock to see neon lights beckoning the ferry into Port on Samui. The rain hammered as we disembarked and jumped onto a minibus to the North coast on Maenam beach. We looked at a variety of bungalows and settled for the cheapest one! A short walk to the beach, a cool little Rasta Bar tucked under the rocks at the end of it, and silence!

We hired a motorbike to explore the island and spent our first day touring and winning a free holiday. After taking in a glimpse of Chaweng beach, we left, more than 1 person per square 100 meters is too much for us to deal with! We severely underestimated our daily budget and ended up going back to our room to get more cash! However fate in play, we struck upon a cool little cafe serving good food at half the price of everywhere else locally.

On our second day we decided to see Lamai beach, the Southern end and Grandfather rock. The waterfall we made the effort to hike up to was not really worth the effort! We had seen most of the island and thought we'd buy some souvenirs. Once the cash had all gone we returned home and restocked our wallets for the Chaweng night markets. At least that's where we tried to go...

Navigating on our primitive map (which we left in the bungalow) in the dark, by motorbike was interesting, or as we've become to call these events- “an experience”! We took a road too soon and ended up driving the majority of the Bophut end of the island and to the airport in the north opposed to the east coast market! Luck was upon us though as we found our pancake man, and stopped for some 20BAHT rotis in consolation.

We finally made th night lights, ladyboys, bars, clubs and stalls, but found it quite strikingly awkward to dodge the crowds and avoid all the touts and drunken 'farang'. We headed back after a while to find all the restaurants closed and paying a fortune for dinner!

Our last day on the island was spent on our beach, enjoying a swim, read and massage. Accompanied by a few fruit shakes, the day slowly passed by and we packed up to move on to Koh Phangan.

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