Sun, sand and........spiders in Ko Samui

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Having left Bangkok finally after missing the first plane, we managed to get on a flight 2 hours later and were on our way south to the Gulf of Thailand to the beautiful tropical island of Ko Samui. I was really interested to see what Laura was going to think of this place as she has never been to anywhere like this before and she loved Bangkok so I was hoping Ko Samui was going to blow her away!

When we landed we had to laugh was we had just flown out of the newly built Bangkok airport which is the 2nd largest in the world and then flew into probably the world’s smallest by the look of it. It was literally a bamboo hut, which consisted on a bamboo roof and no walls. It was such a contrast from the huge airport we had flown out of.

As soon as we handed the heat it us, It was only a 1 hours flight south but the increase in temperature was incredible, I know this is the hottest time of the year but the temp must have been nearly 40 with seriously high humidity!! So we did what anyone in this situation would do and that was check into the hotel as fast as possible and head straight to the beach for a swim. I had already organized a really lovely hotel right on the beach which was great as we were in the sea within minutes of dropping our bags.
It was great to watch Laura’s face as we emerged through all the tropical vegetation that surrounded our hotel onto the gorgeous beach, Laura’s jaw just dropped as she was greeted which the most stunning beach, palm trees and the most crystal clear sea. The whole flight I had been trying to explain what it was like but no amount of explaining could prepare her for actually seeing it for herself. Having never been to a tropical climate before Laura was so shocked to find the water so warm that we were able just to walk into it like getting into a bath!! It was really great to just swimming around looking back at the incredible scenery, it was so much quieter and relaxing than Bangkok and I knew the next few days were going to be awesome. It was so strange to be with Laura again after 8 months, to finally be with one another in Thailand experiencing this place, it still didn’t feel real and it was certainly a lot different from the time had together in Devizes.

The first day we relaxed around the hotel and on the beach still recovering slightly from the hangover from our last night in Bangkok and we were still laughing about the fact that we had missed our flight!! After 2.5 years of travelling I think I have now missed every form of transport at one time or another now - the cause - 90% of the time alcohol related!

The following day I decided to rent a motorbike so we could ride around the island and I could show Laura a few of the sights I had seen when I we here the previous week with my Aussie mate, Jason. At first she was quite nervous at being on the back but within 10 mins she was totally relaxed and just taking in the scenery as we drove around the coast stopping at a few gorgeous beaches on the way. We made our way up to the highest point of the highest mountain of the island so we could get a look out over the island but this didn’t quite go to plan as I had a real ‘Charlie’ moment and misread the fuel gauge, yes I know you’re probably wondering how the hell anyone can miss read a fuel gauge but with me anything is possible and so there you have it, I got ‘full’ and ‘empty’ the wrong way around and thought I had a full tank of fuel when I fact it was just above empty. So by the time we had driven around half the island and then had started to make our way up the mountain the motorbike started to miss fire, splutter and then stopped dead!!! I couldn’t work out what the hell was up with it till after a few mins I looked at the fuel gauge and realized I had misread it- what an idiot!! Luckily, although we were miles away from anywhere there was the Thai guy that coasted my bike all the way back down the mountain and was able to see a friend of his that filled the bike back up for me and we were back on our way again!! I felt such a tit, what a stupid mistake to make!
We did then finally make it to the top after some very rough off-road driving up a very dusty dirt track which isn’t really advisable to do on a moped but then again we were in Asia and moped is capable of anything as I have seen many times!! We got to the top and were able to sit and enjoy the views back over the island and see all the beautiful beaches, palm trees and even the other islands in the distance. It was lovely and peaceful up here with the added bonus that it was so much cooler at an elevantion of 600m. There were also three really cool monkeys that we were able to feed but the little buggers kept trying to pinch my camera and or bag whenever they could!

Later that evening we went for the most incredible meal, probably one of the best meals I have ever had. Over the past few days I have made Laura try many new foods, including my favorites Pad Thai (Thai style noodles) and spicy noodle soup but this dinner was really something special. Now I really love seafood and the seafood out here is so cheap and so fresh that Laura had to try it. She had never really tried anything other than fish you get at a fish’n’chip shop which doesn’t taste of fish at all. So anyway earlier that day we had found this great restaurant that did a whole range of seafood for a set price which was going to be the best option to let Laura experience and try a whole range of different dishes. So here we go for a set price of 1000 Baht we got: 1 huge whole red Snapper, 4 massive tiger prawns, 2 oysters, 2 calamari, 2 blue crab, a big plate of mussels and then sides of potatoes, corn and salad!! It was incredible value as it worked out to be around 20 pounds for all of that!!! God knows what that would have come too if I had paid for that in the UK!!
Well to say I was stuffed by the end of it would have been an understatement!! I literally couldn’t move but the food was incredible and so unbelievably tasty. Laura had never tried any of it before so I was really happy she tried a bit of everything although she really didn’t like the Mussels or the Oysters which I wasn’t surprised about but the rest of it she loved. So I ended up share most things with her but had both Oysters and the whole plate of mussels to myself - yes I know I’m a fat bastard but seafood isn’t fattening and it is good for you!!!!! I think the best dish was the blue crabs, I have eaten crab a few times but these were far better than I have ever had before and there was so much meat on them!!
After finishing our banquet which took quite a while to get though we headed into the busy part of town to see what the nightlife had to offer. We were also able to meet up with Jason and his Thai mate, Cook and headed to the biggest nightclub known as the green mango which was huge and ended up partying till the early hours but I couldn’t drink as I was still far too full from all that sea food! I felt bloated for hours afterwards, I really should learn to stop eating when I feel full!

On one of the following days we had organized to go on a day safari around the island with a Thai bloke called Baw we had met earlier in the week, we had the most incredible day where he took us to all the sights around the island. It started with a really early pickup from the hotel and our first port of call was to go Elephant riding which Laura was really looking forward to. I had forgotten how rough the ride was, I really couldn’t imagine in olden days when people used to travels on elephants for days and days to get to places. I enjoy it for 30 mins or so but after that it’s just too much effort to keep holding on and stopping yourself falling out. It was a great experience as we were trekked though the jungle and were shown a few sights on the way. But best of all during the whole trip our elephant guide ‘Kia’ was making us jewelry out of this long grass, it was incredibly woven together and during the 30 mins he managed to make 2 rings, 2 wrist bands and necklace all of which were so intricate, I don’t think I could have even made one of them in that time!
After our elephant riding we were then taken to an elephant show where the elephant did a number of different tricks such as walking on 2 feet, sitting upright, playing a harmonic, playing football and slam-dunking a basketball. All of which were pretty cool but I was little worried to how there were taught this as I there have been many reports of animal cruelty in this part of the world, but I was told by Baw afterwards that the elephants here are really well looked after and not miss treated in anyway like in some other parts of Thailand. The funniest bit of the whole show had to be that the husband of a newlywed couple had to come and lie down in front of the elephant where the elephant pretended to stand on him then used its truck to give him a big wet kiss which covered half his face. Then the elephant removed it foot and used its truck on his nether regions to give him ‘a special massage’!!! It was well funny seeing the expression on the man’s face as it didn’t know what to do.
While being here we also were able to see a monkey show which was pretty entertaining and then a Thai boxing fight which was more of a sparring match/ exhibition than a real fight.

Next up we were taken to the Grandmother and grandfather rocks which are quite famous on the island due to an old love story from many years ago but basically the rocks are quite rudely shaped in the style of male and female genitalia. So as you can expect I respected the site by getting stupid picture with the grandfather rock, well it had to be done didn’t it!

We didn’t stay here that long as it was only a couple of rocks and you can only have so much interest in them so we jumped back into the back of the 4x4 and drove off to the temple of the mummified monk, which is exactly what it was, a temple where an old monk had died back in 1974 and is now sat it a glass cabinet for all to see slowly perishing! This was quite a sight and really funny as some wise guy and put a set of dark shades on him ha ha!!

By now it had got extremely hot and both of us were really in need of cooling down so when Baw suggested we head to the waterfall we jumped at the chance. It was lovely little waterfall but so nice and refreshing to swim around in plunge pool and cool down again. This was another first for Laura as she has never been swimming in a waterfall especially while being surrounded by a tropical jungle and it was really funny as she kept getting washed away by the power of the water every time she got close to the waterfall.

Having now cooled down and relaxed in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall it was time to drive up to the top of the mountain that we had gone to the other day. We had a lovely number of Thai dishes to eat but unfortunately neither of us were hungry enough to eat them as it was just too hot which I felt really bad about as they looked lovely.

So anyway now it was time for some proper off-roading across all the mountain ridgeline, it was great fun getting thrown about as Baw navigated our way down the rough and dusty tracks. After a while we arrived at our next destination known as the ‘Magic garden’ which was incredible beautiful and seemed really spiritual and magical. It was an old monk’s place where he spent his whole life carving these amazing stone statues, even the banks of the rivers had craving in them.
We had a little while taking in this great little place before jumping back in the 4x4 and going down some more bumpy tracks when suddenly in the middle of no-where Baw stomped on the brakes dived out of the truck and jumped into the bush with his hands in the air!! I look at Laura with the expression of ‘what the hell??!’ Then a few seconds later he comes running back with this huge spider to which Laura nearly had a heart attack!! Baw had spotted this thing as we were driving past and had just dived at it to catch it! I’m not really that scared of spiders and as much as I didn’t mind looking closely at it, there was no way I was going to hold it especially as Baw had explained he had been bitten by one a few years ago and his whole hand swelled up. I said ‘doesn’t that worry you about been bitten again?’, to which he replied ‘no, I have just learnt not too grabs its legs!!’. Crazy Thai!!!

As you can imagine by now we had seen and done so much that after another hour of off road driving back down to the coast we were both feeling pretty knackered so Baw dropped us back to the hotel so that we could chill out and relax for the rest of the afternoon. It had been an awesome day and really great value for money, I have done a number of day trips and that definitely rates up there with them but for Laura I don’t think she will forget it too soon. It made it all the more special as it was only us 2 on the tour as we passed many other companies doing the same thing and there had loads of people, ours defiantly felt more personal.

Well the fun didn’t end there because the following day we were booked on a boat trip to ‘Ang Thong national park’ which was a group of amazing islands about 1 ½ hour on a boat from Ko Samui. So yet again it was another early start so that we could catch a taxi to the harbor to then be able to catch a boat out to the national park. Our first stop was at the beautiful beach on one of the islands where Laura and I were able to go kayaking. It was a great laughed but ended up being a water fight most of the time as Laura kept finding it hilarious soaking me with water as I kept wobbling the kayak and making her scream, well I got here back for soaking me when I capsized the kayak ha ha. It was really cool as we found some caves too but Laura was being a wimp and didn’t want to go exploring (yes you are a wimp!!).

Once we got back to the beach we decided to take a walk up a few of the viewpoints that looked out over the park, this seemed a good idea at the time but because we had just finished Kayaking and I had just capsized us we where both soaking and only wore flip flops. Now the women guide had mentioned on the way up to the view point that the walk up was a little rough but that was a definite understatement! It was stupidity rocky, half the time it felt like we were rock climbing and that’s not good when your feet are slipping all over the place in wet flip flops. It took us quite a while to get to the first view point but it was well worth it, the view was spectacular as you can see from my main pic, it was breathtaking. Well if we thought walking up was hard going down was even worse, I don’t know how neither of us broke an ankle or anything! We did get back down however and headed back to the boat where we had some nice food while cruising around the islands before stopping at our next island.

This next island was really gorgeous as we had to make our way through a hole in the rocks, up some very steep steps where we were then greeted with an amazing green lagoon which was apparently in the film ‘the beach’ and totally enclosed by huge limestone cliffs all around it. Laura couldn’t believe how friendly the Thai’s are, there really are such happy people that want to make conversation at any time, you never get to fell alone here as there’s always someone wanting to have a chat with you, its so different from the western world.
We made our way back down the rocks to the beach where we were able to snorkel around a little but unfortunately this wasn’t that impressive as the water was very shallow and the visibility wasn’t that great, also there weren’t many fish to see but all the same it was still good fun and a great experience for Laura to try and see what’s it like under the water looking at a coral reef.


We were taken back to Ko Samui and arrived back in the hotel to relax by the pool etc, I don’t think Laura had ever expected to see a much has she has done in the past week, I had told her I had an awful lot planned and only now she started to realize everything your able to do and see in a place such as Thailand, I think she now understands why I love travelling so much as I have explained this is my life!!

For the last few days of the our time here in Ko Samui we just relaxed around by the pool and chilled out on the beach and enjoying our time together before Laura flew back to England. We did manage to rent a bike again and rode off to go see the big Buddha and another temple complex which housed some really cool Buddha’s (one of which had loads of arms) and other temples etc which we found more interesting than the more famous big Buddha.

Neither of us could believe how fast the time went, it really flew by and it seemed no time at all our time was over and we were heading back to the airport to fly back to Bangkok and then for her to head back home.
I really did have the most awesome week with Laura, we did so much more than I can write here but I gotta stop somewhere otherwise I will just go on and on more than I already have. It was so nice to actually live it up for a change while being in Thailand as supposed to cheap guesthouses like usual. I think Laura has really opened her eyes to Asia and like with anyone that comes to this part of the world is now in love with the place and can’t wait to come back again as there is so much more to see.
It was sad saying bye to her again after such a great few days together especially as I’m not sure when I’m heading back to the UK to see her again. It would have been nice if she was out here a little longer but I am glad for the time we did have together.

Well having said farewell I headed back to Bangkok to spend the last few days before heading back to NZ, next up next - me cuddling tigers!

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Photos

Fresh seafood
We had nearly one of everything!!

Me and my Burmese mate
Ever day i walked past his shop and we would end up having a long chat

Pucker up!!
Bet he's never had a kiss like this before

Would you be a little worried??!!
A moment later the elephant gave the 'special massage'

Mummified monk
looking cool

8 Buddhas
Each day of the week had its own buddha with weds have 2 buddhas