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Ko Samui is like paradise. It’s been a mission to get here, but it’s so worth it.
Our night on the sleeper train was a little bit scary because we thought we’d missed our station. Neither of us knew that the time of arrival written on the ticket was in Thai time, not Malay and the Thais are an hour behind Malaysia! The seats get converted into beds at about 8pm and they are actually very comfortable. You get a pillow, blanket, reading light and a curtain for privacy. It’s all goes very quiet by 10pm so me and Terry watched Dumbo, because Terry has wanted to watch it for ages (honest).
Surat Thani rail station is 15KM from the city center which is a real pain. Luckily, this is Thailand so within 2 seconds of leaving the train, we had a little crowd of taxi drivers, hotel representatives etc offering us their services. Our taxi driver charged us 400bhat, which is a bit expensive, but it was so late and we were not in the mood to haggle. On first impressions, we made two observations about Thailand. Firstly, stray dogs are everywhere (so I’m getting over my fear
of dogs this week). Secondly, there is less English. Everywhere we’ve been so far has had most shop signs written in English. Thailand is different and the Thai lettering is completely obscure, google it!
Our hotel was a last minute booking on agoda.com for £13. The hotel was much much nicer than anything we’ve stayed in so far this trip. I’ve included photos, so take a look. It also came with breakfast which consisted of frankfurter sausages, eggs, toast, fried bread and a whole load of Thai food! We were lucky again in the morning, because the hotel offer a Surat Thani – Ko Samui service for £7. Me and Terry got very excited when a pickup truck pulled up to take us to the ferry port and we got to hop in the back. However, our excitement was short lived when we were transferred to a pokey little minibus and driven to the ferry. During this journey, the driver made a few stops. He delivered parcels, he collected parcels, he dropped 8 passengers at 3 different locations before finally taking us to the ferry. Due to his antics, we missed the stupid ferry and had to wait an
hour for the next. We killed the time by eating crispy pork.
The ferry is clean and comfortable but takes an hour and a half to get to Samui. Terry read his Skullduggery book but I’d finished my book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (amazing by the way) the night before so played angry birds for an hour instead. We knew the taxi driver would have no idea where our small guesthouse, Chaulty Towers was so we wrote down their number and had him call them instead. It felt like a really long drive to get there but was probably only 20minutes.
The place we’re staying is awesome. The owner has built 5 guestrooms, a pool, snooker table, bar and jaccuzzi for the guests and we have a massive room, our own sun loungers and own bathroom for the first time all trip! We are definitely coming back here one day. We chilled out round the pool and sat in the jaccuzzi for a while. We also met Rambo, the resident dog (he’s so cute) then got ready and went out.
The owner of the guesthouse plays in a duet with his mate and they had
a gig at Billabong Surf club bar so me and Terry went with him. I drank a lot of cheap beer (Thai beer is called Chang) and Terry drank some girly cocktails (see pics). Thailand has a reputation for prostitution and it’s pretty much right infront of you at night in any bar. Thai girls work at the bars for no pay and picks up customers for the evening. The customer has to buy the girls drinks and pay a “bar fine” of about £6 for the girls company. After the bar shuts, it’s up to the girl what happens but I think it’s pretty obvious. It’s quite creepy to see a lot of 50-70 year old western men with 20 year old Thai girls and believe me, it’s everywhere. Thailand is not for the faint hearted and we haven’t even been to Bangkok yet! Dermot, you’d love it here by the way, it’s completely outrageous.
The bar was lovely because it looked right out onto the sea and you could see a neighbouring island, Koh Pha Ngan from the bar. It was a late night and we slept in till 10am today. When we woke up, the power
on the island was out. It happens very frequently, sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for days. Luckily, it was only out for two hours but our breakfast had to be cooked on a gas stove and therefore took a while to be made. It was well worth the wait because we had a full English!! I’m happy to announce that as Thailand is a Buddhist country, bacon is back on the menu!
The resort of Lamai is pretty much perfect for a holiday. There’s loads of shops, restaurants and bars down the main street and the beach is there too of course.
Me and Terry spent the whole afternoon in Lamai today, on our sun loungers, drinking juice, reading books and watching people go by. People walk up and down the beach all day trying to sell goods and services. One lady was determined to give me and Terry both pedicures and was touching up our feet, saying how bad they were. She called Terry a sexy man (and a guy told Terry he liked his tattoo’s today....he’s popular) but we managed to get her to go away. The others weren’t quite as persistent. It’s
all “hello, where you from” and “I give you special discount”. I got a feeling we will be hearing a lot more of this on our trip. There was a cool bar we ate in called Swing bar which has actual wooden swings attached to the ceiling as seating! It was quite cloudy today, but still baking hot. It does feel very strange to be so hot when the sun is trapped behind the clouds.
So now were relaxing by the pool for a bit. We’ll go out for dinner in a bit and for some drinks in town. Ko Samui is awesome and we are both gutted that we leave tomorrow. We have booked bus tickets to Bangkok for £17 each direct from Samui which takes all the hassle out of having to get back to Surat Thani. My next blog will be from Bangkok which is going to be mental, stay tuned!
Also, happy fathers day to my dad Brian 😊 Love you dad xxxx
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Brian
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Hi Ki and thanks for the Fathers Day greetings.Got me a bit confused as I had to look up to see when it is and see that it's not till 19th June,so I suppose you must be going to somewhere without ant connection to the outside world and yoy just wanted to get it in early!We looked at some photos of Smui last night and it looks very lush.Have a good time when you get to Bangkok. Brian