Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan, Ko Tao, Ko Chaval-Al-HaZman [Ko Great]

After the not-so-amazing weather in Krabi (75% rain), we really weren't expecting anything from the beaches in the East. If you try googling for "Thailand weather in August", search a zillion weather websites or even look at other people blogs, you simply cannot find any clear answer besides "It's the wet season between June-August".

So when we got to Ko Samui, and had nothing but beautiful, clear skies with absolutely no hint of rain, boy o boy were we surprised. So in case you were wondering for a future visit, then, you can quote us: June-August is mostly rainy/wet in south-EAST Thailand (e.g., Krabi, Ko Phi Phi) but it's just PERFECT in south-WEST Thailand (e.g., Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan, Ko Tao)

In Ko Samui we found ourselves surrounded by thousands of fellow travelers (or more precisely vacationers, since the backpacker type is a rare animal there). It was nice to have tons of signs in English, Western food and party atmosphere but we were glad we came there at the end of our travels rather than at the beginning. We relaxed for two nights there before heading off with a boat to Ko Pha Ngan.

In Ko Pha Ngan we headed straight to Bottle Beach, the less crowded one, found ourselves a small hut just on the beach, walked a few meters and bumped into Shahar and Shaked - our friends from Boston! It was so amazing to run into them in the middle of nowhere (so to speak), on one of the not-so-central beaches in Ko Pha Ngan. The beach itself only has 3 'hut-areas' (there not really hostels and definitely not hotels), 3-4 restaurants and a strip of 100-200m of white beach. We had terrific few days with the guys, learning to play Whist (great game!), playing some volleyball and just chilling out. We also went out for a couple of dives on the way between Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Tao, in Sail Rock.

We then continued for Ko Tao which is known for its numerous dive places. We had 2 quite good dives there and enjoyed the great white beach, which exceeded our expectations - it was almost as good as Bottle Beach, aside from being much more crowded. All through those days it didn't rain once during the day, and only a bit in night time - August is definitely a good time to come there, weather-wise. If you have time, moving from Ko Samui to Ko Pha Ngan to Ko Tao (and between their beaches) is definitely a good idea so you can get to see the differences between all of them.

A word or two about the diving: we dove in Sail Rock, White Rock and Chumpon Pinnacle. They're all pretty nice spots but if you're used to the Red Sea, Belize or even Bay Islands they're no comparison, at least when we were there (August). Even ignoring the poorer visibility (15-20'), the corals and fish around Ko Tao were not as colorful, rich and varied as in latter places. Again - that's only our impression having had a few dives there in August. You might have a different experience, and besides we enjoyed every dive anyway... (Maybe in our next travel we'd buy an underwater camera case to show you how it looks down there)

In summary, Thailand was great, but after more than a week surrounded by English signs and crowds of tourists, we longed for a bit more of backpacking/traveling sense. We took a bus/boat to Bangkok, from where we booked a flight to Manila - on our way to explore the Philippines. We knew we wouldn't find much tourists there now, being the monsoon period, but were really concerned we were abandoning the Thai sun for gloomy, wet and rainy weather. In a few days we would know whether our bet was a good one or not.

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