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Chaweng Beach
Great beach if you can get to it !!!Koh Samui - Chaweng Beach - A nice beach if you can find it
Around 1 pm on Saturday 26th April I flew into Koh Samui Airport which I discovered when leaving for Bangkok four days later has the most attractive departure lounges of any airport that I have passed through. Bangkok Airways owns the airport and has a monopoly on flights to Koh Samui which can be expensive compared to other destinations in Thailand. The upside is the service is excellent, they seem to nearly always run to schedule and they have a lounge or "courtesy corner" where all classes of traveller can have a snack, drink and use their free internet service.
It was also a pleasant suprise to find a mini van service to my hotel for 120 baht from the airport - I was expecting the taxi mafia but there was not a taxi in sight. You can catch a taxi truck from the street but why bother at this price. I will say that first up I did not like Koh Samui but as the days passed it grew on me - I think I would need to spend more time in Koh Samui
and it really is an island paradise if you can find the best places to stay and tour during your stay. There are many inland spas and resorts and I believe if you found somewhere away from the busy Chaweng Road area you could have a very relaxing time in Koh Samui - it really depends on what you are looking for. If you are really keen for nightclubs and bars then Chaweng Beach is the place to be.
I stayed at the Akwa Guesthouse in South Chaweng, the quieter end of the 7 km long beach. It is the longest beach that I have visited and I walked many kilometres while in Koh Samui. Chaweng Beach is a very nice sandy beach, great for swimming, but the development is way over the top with resorts all along both sides of Chaweng Road which runs along the beach. There is very little public access which means you need to walk through the resorts to get to the beach. I reckon this is accepted by the resort owners and nobody said anything to me anytime I walked through their private land but it still makes you feel uncomfortable when you
Samui Airport
Happy room aquarium compare it to Ao Nang Beach in Krabi where there has been no building on the main part of the beach, just on the other side of the road.
If you do not want to walk along Chaweng Road their are plenty of motor bike taxis you can barter down to 50 or 60 baht to take you from South to the more centralised entertainment area near Burger King and Starbucks. There is also a big lake next to Chaweng Beach where you will find many bars including the huge Reggae Bar complex. Walking along Chaweng Road is a painful experience as you are constantly hounded by taxi and tailor touts and others selling their wares - I just ignored them. It is probably better to walk along the beach from wherever you are staying and then go back up to Chaweng Road through a resort to avoid all the touts and traffic.
The Akwa Guesthouse (booked through wotif.com) was good value for 1299 baht per night for a deluxe room as this can be a very expensive area to stay. The standard rooms at Akwa are 100 metres from the main guesthouse building on a side street.
The rooms at Akwa are pop art decorated with a comfortable bed and I had a good view onto Chaweng Road. The guesthouse restaraunt made excellent seafood pizzas and had a wide range of food and drink available. At Akwa you can walk straight across the road through a resort on to the beach. There are plenty of resorts to choose from that have a beach frontage and are closer to the main entertainment areas but you will pay a lot more baht each day for your room.
My research had shown that one of the highlights of any visit to Koh Samui is a boat trip to the Ang Thong National Marine Park made up of 42 islands featuring limestone kharsts, tropical rainforests and deserted beaches. I decided to take the speed boat version of the tour instead of the big boat and after a light breakfast served at the pier as part of the tour we had a one hour trip through calm waters west of Koh Samui to Wao Island for some snorkelling. I had purchased my own snorkelling gear in Bangkok which I thought would be better health wise than using someone elses and it
AKWA Guesthouse
Pop art decorated rooms worked perfectly but the water was not very clear compared to the Phi Phi Islands and the variety of fish was disapointing. There had been storms earlier in the week which may explain the murky waters.
We then cruised to Tai Phow Island where we had to wait for 45 minutes on the beach while another group of tourists were using the sea conoes. Eventually it was our turn for a fairly uninspiring paddle around some limestone caves in the extreme heat of the midday sun. We had a nice lunch on the island and then headed for Mae Koh Island where we climbed a stairway through the rain forest and some cliffs to view the inland lagoon and island viewpoint. It was an easy climb and worth the effort to see the magnificent view and impressive lagoon.
We spent some time cruising around the islands which are a magnificent sight before returning through rougher seas back to Koh Samui - No one was sea sick but I was happy to get back to shore again. We were then taken to the tour company shop for a free drink and of course to see their souvenirs for sale
AKWA Guesthouse
How do you turn the light on ? he he before having the option of an elephant ride or ATV drive for fifteen minutes. I will not ride elephants after staying at the Elephant Nature Park and learning about how cruely they may be treated in some of the elephant camps so I decided to try the ATV. I managed two laps on the four wheel vehicle and they are extremely dangerous in untrained hands - I will take some lessons before another attempt as I nearly tipped over a couple of times.
The tour to Ang Thong National Marine Park was fine but sometimes I think the tour companies and guides are losing their enthusiasm after doing the same tours every day of the week - it must be a bit boring for them but they need to make it as good as possible for the tourists. This tour was three times the cost of my Phi Phi island tours and about two thirds as good in the quality department.
There is plenty to do at night in Koh Samui as there are hundreds of restaurants and bars aound Chaweng Beach. It is low season and most of the bars were empty including the huge Reggae Bar
Ang Thong Marine Park
Snorkelling was nothing special today following some stormy weather which probably could hold two thousand customers but I counted twenty and it seemed quiet everywhere on the island. As always in Thailand I managed to make some new friends and viewed some cabaret shows which were a lot of fun.
The next day I took Mr Ung's Jungle Safari Tour so that I could see more of the island's interior. The tour was a combination of very cheesy touristy stuff like visiting the monkey show and crocodile farm but had some excitement with the 4 x 4 truck drives up to the viewpoint through some very rugged terrain. We saw the Grandpa and Grandma rocks which look very closely like male and female genitalia and also the mummified monk with his cool sunglasses and he is remarkably preserved in his glass case in a temple.
The best part of the tour was a stop at the Namuang Waterfall where I decided to have a swim to cool off even though there were at least sixty other tourists crowding the area. The waterfall was very impressive as there had been a lot of rain recently and I jumped in to the deep water and sat under the waterfall
as it pounded on to my shoulders.
Other places we visited on the tour included the Buddha Magic Garden with some impressive statues, a good lunch at the viewpoint where there was no view because of the rainy weather before we finished at the Big Buddha which is a huge Buddha image on a small island at the north of Koh Samui. It was a good day out and a lot of fun with our skilled drivers swerving through the mud and the jungle. The drivers would ocassionally stop and pick up spiders and snakes to scare the tourists.
You will find the people of Koh Samui are as friendly as anywhere in Thailand. When a lad in a truck load of about ten others probably heading home after a full days work jumped up and smiled, waved and said hello to our 4 x 4 vehicle full of tourists it really stuck in my mind. You really need to experience Thailand to get more of an feeling for the caring, happy nature of the Thai people. I am a long way from understanding how they think and you certainly need to go with the flow and not
Ang Thong Marine Park
Many small islands - a nice spot to visit worry too much if you have Thai friends - I am being educated every day I am here. When you are in the tourist areas just be careful as some people that offer to be your friend or seem to be helpful may have other motives - I guess that applies wherever we may travel.
My last day on Koh Samui was spent watching some dvds from the library at Akwa Guesthouse and a swim and walk along Chaleng Beach. I am a bit weary from touring and miss my friends in Bangkok so I have returned back there to do very little till I return to Australia on May 9. Sorry if some of the pics are not as clear as usual - I reckon that the lens was sea sprayed in Krabi and I was so busy I forgot to clean it.
Click on the pics if you want a larger view and select next to see all the pictures.
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