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Published: November 15th 2007
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Beach Life
The cloud was a reminder of the season but it was still reassuringly hot. The next stop of our island hopping tour was Koh Samui, the most famous Thai island on the eastern side. It's also the biggest and the most commercialised, with most things firmly aimed at Westerners and specifically, package holiday tourists. We may not have been package tourists, but we were looking forward to the relaxation all the same.
Our boat from Koh Tao to Koh Samui was at 3pm so that allowed us some sleep time in the morning, until I realised our check out time was at the ungodly hour of 10am. Waking up at 9, I was greeted with an aggressive hangover retaliating from the night before and I realised the next few hours would be hard. Emma on the other hand was up and about instantly talking about going for breakfast at the nice French bakery on the next street which I wasn't really up to. After speaking to our neighbour and fellow drinker the previous night Stew, he informed us he had arranged a late check out with the hostel as Megan too was feeling the ill effects. It was a great idea so I marched straight down to the office hoping to arrange a similar
Boat Trip
Going back to the mainland, although we sat on the deck and got some amazing views. deal.
The late checkout was fine but they were wanting to charge us 1,500 Baht (much more than we'd paid for anywhere in our travels) for the room the previous night instead of 500 which we'd been paying up til then. Although we'd been told we would still get "divers rates" the previous day, they ended up having to get the manager's OK for the 500 room rate. Not exactly an ideal start.
By the time 2:30 came and we were leaving our hostel, my hangover had graduated to sickness. I prayed the boat journey would be smoother this time and miraculously, we got on and it was plain sailing! Megan and Stew were going to Koh Phangan so we waved goodbye to them when we reached there and sailed onto Koh Samui.
We had a transfer from the pier to the town arranged as part of our ticket which was a load off our mind as that proved to be the biggest issue with Koh Phangan. We had opted to go for Chaweng Beach, the busiest and biggest beach on the island. This was mainly due to the fact we had stayed in a quieter part
Ocean
I'm just not used to seeing water so blue. in Koh Phangan, and although the isolation was great, we decided we wanted a place that had a bigger beach and more food options.
After getting off the bus, we had our usual hunt for accommodation and ended up in a nice bungalow style room 2 minutes from the beach for a relatively cheap price. We spent the remainder of the evening meandering around the nearby "strip", which had more than a hint of Khao San Road about it but it was fun to explore.
Getting up the next day, we headed to the beach. It was a long, long beach but because the islands at this side of Thailand are still in monsoon season, the water wasn't crystal clear, but we still had a great day. It was very hot (we had just missed the Koh Samui floods a few days before) and although the tide was in, we got some sun loungers right at the ocean and read our books. It wasn't long before I was in swimming (sunbathing isn't really my thing) and ended up getting my snorkel out too, although there was nothing to see really.
We managed to avoid sunburn and later
Chaweng Beach
Taken from the the dizzing height of a sun lounger. headed back to have some relaxation time about town and ended up having some drinks in nearby bars. There were a lot of themed bars all aimed at the discerning holidaymaker and there were very few backpackers about. This was the annoying thing about Chaweng as a lot of these tourists (not all though) were extremely rude, particularly to the locals, and overhearing their conversations was a bit cringeworthy. The commercialisation was a bit over the top (McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, etc. everywhere!) so it was a bit too glitzy for our liking but we knew what we were going to before we came.
The next day was a bit lazier (although going to the beach isn't strenuous by any means) and started off by playing a round of Crazy Golf. It was fun, although some of the holes were a bit ridiculous. We then walked about a bit until I had to go back to the room to lie down as wasn't feeling too great. Emma got an amazing foot massage during this time, which she said was even better than the one on Koh Phangan. We looked about at the local tour places too when I was
Crazy Golf
Emma about to practice her trick shot. back up and considered either an island tour or a trip to the nearby National Marine Park, where
The Beach was set. The Park was closed though and the island trip prices were pretty high as mainly aimed at holidaymakers. We considered getting a bike to go around the island but never really got around to it.
We headed out for an amazing Mexican meal later and booked our tickets for the next leg of our journey to Phuket. We had to rearrange our flight from Singapore too as running out of time so ended up having to make a fairly strict schedule for us to keep to over the next couple of weeks. Still got loads of legs to go.
We headed to bed early-ish and never really explored the sleepless club scene in the town, both due to funds and also a lesson learned from the last night on Koh Tao. Koh Samui had been a great relaxation stop after the fairly knackering diving course and were hungry to hit the next place.
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