Blogs from Ko Samui, South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 10

So having not slept, we packed up and managed to check out and get on our ferry to Koh Samui, Andy was asleep on the floor until about 15mins before we had to get out. Impressive packing skills, I take ages. Short trip and when we arrived we were spoilt rotten as our friend Jun works for a charter company in an office on the pier. He was there when we arrived and let us borrow a bike and a car to get ourselves and our bags to his place. Jun has the most amazing aquarium, with even a little turtle and lobster which make very cool pets. Jun’s let us borrow two mopeds so we went out for lunch before heading to the pier to go on a cruise on his boat. It was a ... read more

So, as promised, the blog of the 50 hour trek. We had got on our little fishing boat back to the mainland to meet a private minibus which would race us back up Road 13 all the way past Pakse again and on to the Laos-Thai border. We arrived at the border and had to get out and walk across. We changed the last of our Kip back into Bhatt and walked underground and popped up again in Thailand. On the other side we were met by another private minibus who's seats reclined to complete horizontal. This was freakin amazing!! Cheryl KO'd and had the best couple of hours travel sleep ever. Unfortunately, my usually solid bladder decided 5 minutes in that now was the time that it was going to decide it couldn't wait and ... read more

The ferry ride over to Koh Tao was a bit of a mess - the ferry will hold hundreds of passengers - but no cars.  So it's a a huge mass of people trying to get on quickly so you can find a seat - but in the meantime it's a confusion of getting a spot for your bags, too.  All the bags went in the front of the ferry, so we had to bypass a seat to drop our bags, but then had to wade through the other people getting on back to our seats.  In the end, everyone had a place for both their bags and their bottoms.  It was a good two hour ride, and Mr. Bean was playing on the TV.  I could not enjoy the views as I had picked a ... read more

I've suffered from information overload when it comes to planning where to go in Koh Samui and the other islands to the north in the Gulf of Thailand. There are hundreds of descriptions of hotels, bars, and restaurants in my guidebook, and it doesn't help that I'm using a Kindle (not recommended for guide books), so it's hard to flip through or bookmark interesting places. Also, since it was the beginning of my trip, I hadn't much of a chance to exchange ideas with other travelers. Since research was overwhelming, I decided to stay at 2 days on each of the three main islands -- Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, and Koh Tao. It's easy to get to Koh (sometimes spelled Ko) Samui on a short flight or a longer overnight train then bus then ferry from ... read more

So on Satursday the 9th of June we left India (following on from our last blog) and flew to Bngkok, Thailand. We flew to Bangkok without any solid plans, with no hotel or forward journey booked. We had however decided on one thing; that our time in South-East Asia will be taken at a much slower pace than we took in India. The flight was fairly short from New Delhi to Bangkok, and as soon as we got through immigration we made the decision that we would try to fly to Ko Samui. At 7:30pm local time, we bought tickets in the airport for the 9pm flight and ran through check-in to the gate. (Grabbing a quick bite to eat on the way!) We touched down in Samui airport around 10:30pm that night and Roxy was ... read more