Koh Samui: Chaweng Beach

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Arriving at Baan rom mai we settled into our room by spreading our stuff around and finally hanging up some clothes. We had a quick dip in the pool after another sweaty journey then headed off to the beach in search of some food. Chaweng beach couldn’t have been more different to the one we had just left in koh Tao, all along the beach front were big posh hotels with fancy restaurants We learnt this when we sat down at the first place we came across and embarrassed as we couldn’t afford anything of the menu just asked for 2 fantas which ended up costing the same amount as we had paid for a full meal and drinks in Bangkok.
After walking about 2 miles down the sandy beach we decided to stop at arc bar and had some burgers and chips. We decided to venture out that night in search of friends and ended up meeting the ozzy version of me and Danni, it was really quite similar how alike we were! The girls were called Jo and Alex and were from Melbourne. We got talking when there was an electrical fire as the sea water covered the light plugs on the sea front. They had been in chaweng several days and said they would show us where to go. After a few spy wine coolers they took us to a little hidden Rasta bar with a local Thai Rasta band playing awesome music. We decided it was time to get back on the buckets and ordered a sangsom bucket. Once the band and finished we were introduced to Jo's Thai lover (the trumpet player) and some of the rest of the band. After some persuasion the trumpet player came with us to the bucket bar.
The bucket bar we had discovered sold buckets for 99 baht’s! Ordering our buckets we got dancing and soon learnt there was a Russian strip club across from us, with girls dancing outside. We decided to start bit of a dance off with them, not that they knew that either way we still one! After a few buckets we headed to the Green Mango Club and were soon dancing up on the podium for all to see our amazing dance moves! Once up there more people got on and there was about 6 of us on there...starting to feel slightly worried it may collapse we got off and continued dancing else were.

The night ended and we headed for a slice of pizza, that wasn’t as good as we were hoping, and headed back down the beach to our hotel. On the way back we adopted a dog that followed as the whole way; we soon named him Jason and protected him from the other dogs trying to attack him on way back! We arranged to meet Jo and Alex the next night and on the way to our room we went to 7/11 that we were amazed to discover is 24hours, and got ourselves some crisps and water.
We woke the next day with a bucket hangover and went for toast and shakes, which cost us £5! Again 3 times as much as we paid in Koh Tao. We spent rest of day chilling by the pool and down beach playing bat and ball. We then went to have a Thai massage on the beach...which is very difficult to choose where to go when every 5 minutes you hear 'Thai masssaaagggeee'. We decided on the one nearest and had a lunch massage much better than the scary experience we had when in Chiang Mai last time!
We met up with Alex and Jo and 8pm as arranged and found out they were still struggling with a hangover so we all decided to make it an early night. We said bye and arranged to meet them at there’s to use there much better swimming pool the next day. Zoe and I headed off to satisfy out subway craving and settled with a 6inch as couldn’t afford a footling. We also got some same same, but different gaybans...to fit in with the cool people.
The next day we woke up early (well early for us) ready for our day trip around the island. It was the sunniest and hottest day so far so we were a little bit gutted we were going to be spending most of it on a minibus, especially after discovering the air con didn’t work and had more leather seats for us to stick to! The first stop was a viewpoint overlooking chaweng beach. Although the view was amazing it wasn’t quite as breath-taking as the view point in phi phi on our previous trip to Thailand 2 years ago. Next stop off was a monkey show, showing how man and monkey work together to harvest coconuts. We didn’t really enjoy this and it seemed the monkey was doing all the work climbing the tree and throwing down the coconuts, while the guy just held the rope and shouted in Thai. After this we headed for the mummified monk which was bizarre. He was sat in a glass box to preserve his body and had ray bans on to cover his hollow eye sockets. The next stop off was the one we had been looking forward to, the waterfall. When we got there we were told it would be a 20 minute walk up hill in the sweltering heat or we had to pay 100 baht’s each to get a 4 x 4 truck there. We grudgingly paid the 100 baht’s each and when we got there the waterfall wasn’t quite as spectacular as we had hoped but still better than the one we had seen in koh phangnan last time. We had a swim at the base of the fall; the water was very cold, but refreshing after being stuck on the minibus. By this point we had had enough and just wanted to go back and dive in the pool but still had the big Buddha and temples to go. Arriving at the big Buddha we had to walk up 73 steps to get there so being tourists took a few pictures. There was a small market surrounding the Buddha, we were gasping for water and ended up paying 40 baht’s for a bottle whereas in the 7/11 it was only 10 baht’s! The final stop off was some temples on the water. They were beautiful but nothing compared to the ones we had visited in chaing mai 2 years ago.
When we finally made it back to our hotel we headed straight to the pool to cool off. After a quick dip we went to find the girls at their hotel and went for some food. They took us to a little Thai shack place called Matlang at the opposite end of the beach to the bars; here the food was both yummy and cheap so we were happy! After getting ready in our sweat pit of a room we went to the meet the girls at the bar on the beach we had first met them at and had a few spy wine coolers before heading to the main street. A Thai lady dressed as a cow girl (who later became our friend) ushered us into the bar and although it was only 8.30pm we started on the buckets. After being pestered by Champiorn (Thai Cow girl) Jo and Alex finally gave in and bought some Sambuca shots off her which ne and Danni grudgingly drank. As per usual the Bucket bar was our next port of call and the nightly dance off with the Russian strippers commenced, of course we won again! We were acting a bit crazy dancing around like mad people the 4 of us attracted quite a lot of attention and got talking to a gay couple from wales and another group of 3 lads who we later saw at Green Mango.
We headed to Green Mango and continued the crazy dancing and mounted the podium once again. We met the Gay couple and the English boys again and taught them our tash dance which wipes the sweat of your tash! After talking further with the English boys we discovered they were doing a lot of the same route as us and were also headed to Lamai so swapped email and Facebook details in the hope we had made some new friends for our next part of the adventure. The night came to an end and girls headed back a little before us as the buckets had taken them already... Me and Zoe scoped out an amazing pancake stall and had yummy cheese pancakes which we devoured within seconds. Feeling brave (parents look away now) we then decided to get a taxi motorbike as the long walk back was not looking so appealing! Arriving safely at our hotel we jumped in bed at 5.00 am.
It’s Wednesday! We woke and headed straight to the pool to cure our hangovers, then went to meet the girls at their pool... They were waiting and hungry so we all headed to Matlang again for food, which was very yummy pad Thai and spring rolls, that good, that we ordered second plate of spring rolls!
The weather was amazing and we spent the day by the pool and in the sea with Alex and Jo. We planned our Wednesday night out adventures and wrote a list of to dos! We had sexy photo shoot in the pool to fit in with all the people getting them done in there speedos, me and Zoe have decided to create a speedo photo album as the sightings are very frequent and often disturbing! Our list of Wednesday night consisted of:
- Dinner at Matlang again (because it was cheap and yummy food)
- Bottle of vodka to make watermelon vodka shake
- Sand bar for buckets and shisha
- Firework and lucky balloon
- To buy some crazy glow in dark glasses
- Rasta bar one last time
- Strip show to see sexy ladies at Dream girls
- Bucket Bar
- Picture of armadillo (really an iguana what Zoe thought was armadillo)
- Green Mango
- Sound Bar
- Find Jason the dog
- Pancakes
- Motorbike taxi
So we got ready and headed out stopping of 7/11 for some vodka only £2, which smelt very wrong. We met the girls at there’s and headed to Matlang for watermelon shake (with paint stripper vodka) and some more yummy food. Once finished we went to the Sand bar on the beach for some buckets and shisha. We went for the mint flavour which we both struggled to do, most likely not doing it right. The table got knocked and fell with the shisha on it, which he then quickly brought a new one out...after about an hour we were incredibly chilled life was good on the beach with our new friends. We brought a lucky balloon and watched it float up in the sky, after the Thai man let off 2 fireworks for us.
Ark bar was next on the list to do, and the beach party that started at 2 in afternoon was already in full swing! Finding a seat we decided on getting some spy wine coolers, Zoe soon spotted some celebs- Jason Grimshaw and Tinhead from Brookside. Keen to get a photo Jo stop eagerly behind him at the bar so she could take a picture of Zoe with him. We bantered with the lady selling glow in dark glasses and ticked something else off our list.
We then headed to the Rasta bar and enjoyed the music one last time with 'monkey man' replaying in our heads we headed to the Dream girls to see the sexy Thai ladies. We sat at the front and watched as some of the girls enjoyed dancing around some looked very sad to be there and barely moved. If you brought ping pongs and threw them in all the girls scrambled to get them as it was extra tip money.
The bucket bar was next with 99 baht buckets, we started dancing again... A Thai man came over and asked Jo if he could paint on her, he painted an amazing flower and soon moved onto all of us painting amazingly beautiful flowers and a butterfly on Zoë’s back in bright UV paint. We offered to buy him a drink which he refused and we thanked him lots. We went onto Green Mango where everyone loved our body paint and some girls were clearly jealous and were trying to wipe it off us and one stole my Neon sunglasses, I gave her the evil eye and she soon walked off. Near the end of the night we bumped into our Thai cowgirl friend Champiorn and had a boogie with her until the club shut at 3am then she took us off to sound bar as this was open until later. Between us all we shared 2 buckets and danced the night away on the stage, Chumpiorn teaching us some of her sexy dance moves and us copying rather badly. At 5am we decided to call it a night and went in search for a pancake vender. I was swapping details with Chumpiorn and was dissapointed as I missed Danni calling me to that she had spotted Jason the dog as we feared him dead after the night he walked home with us. We decided against a motorbike taxi and got a regular one home instead.
Waking up for the last time at Baanramai we both felt a little worse for wear, packed up the rest of our belongings and headed to see the girls for an emotional goodbye. We went to the beach and bought matching friendship bracelets to commemorate the last 4 days, fittingly we got ones the colour of the Jamaican flag as the Rasta bar had been our favourite haunt during our time here. We said our goodbyes to Jo and Alex, we were sad but excited to stay with them and party it up in Melbourne and off we set on another sweaty taxi ride to Lamai beach for 5 days of chilling out and having well needed bucket detox..........

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