SE Asia 2014 Day 21

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We have another blessed opportunity to sleep in. Then it's breakfast and repack. We will store one bag at our Bangkok hotel and retrieve it on our way back. The eight of us who are Koh Samui-bound are the last to leave the hotel at 12:30 for the airport.

Koh Samui is an island off the east coast of the Thailand peninsula that juts south into the Indian Ocean. (The bottom bit of the peninsula belongs to Malaysia; that's where Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are.) Koh Samui is a vaguely square island close to 230 sq k in size, with a permanent population of about 63,000 and many times that number in tourists. It is wholly devoted to tourism. Much of the coastline consists of white-sand beach, all of which belongs to a resort or one of the public beaches.

We arrive at the Koh Samui airport after a 45-minute flight. It's thunderously hot and humid here, but so beautiful. Brilliant, fragrant flowers and towering palms are everywhere you look. A van is waiting for us. Our resort is in the northwest corner of the island, basically the opposite side from the airport, so it's a 45-minute ride. The islanders, if anything, are even crazier than the mainlanders when it comes to driving and the roads are quite narrow, with the result that there are numerous near collisions en route.

We arrive at our home for the next five days, the Mai Samui Beach Resort. We check in with duty manager Birgit, who's German and very pleasant. Vi and I request a room on the ground floor, which delays things a bit for us. We are at this point panting from heat exhaustion, and it is a great relief to finally get our room. It's lovely, with an efficient AC.

We all get together for dinner at the hotel's International Restaurant. The food is excellent. Life is clearly much slower-paced here, including the service, but that's fine as we are in no hurry.

Happy to retire to bed. We find the bed pretty much the hardest of the trip, but is blessedly cool in our room and we sleep soundly.

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