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Published: January 13th 2009
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We arrived on a very wet Koh Samui around lunchtime on New Year's Eve and as we looked out the windows of the bus we could see rivers of rain pouring down the road. The prospect of spending New Years Eve on a wet beach wasn't really getting us in the spirit.
Our rooms on Koh Samui where basically a terraced version of the bungalows we had in the jungle although the mosquito count was a lot higher, we had (some) hot water and the walls were paper thin (more on that in a bit).
The weather managed to settle down a bit that evening and because it was New Year all the hotels force you to go to their overpriced dinner and party. The food wasn't too bad, but once we had our fill we headed out to the beach for cocktails. As we walked along the beach, all the resorts had a bar on the beach and maybe a band playing, all was going well (and getting more blurry) until about 20 minutes before new year when we sat down outside quite a posh hotel and ordered drinks. No drinks came and when the countdown started some
of us were a little angry. It seemed to really halt the flow of the night and after another 30 minutes we were walking back to the hotel.
We got a minibus to one of the bigger beaches (Chewang) on New Year's Day, it was quite touristy and we had people trying to sell us things all day. It didn't actually rain, but the threat was always there and no sun managed to peak through the clouds. We spent the evening playing pool and drinking cocktails (I seem to have gotten a real taste for cocktails, especially tequila sunrise).
The high-speed catamaran to Koh Tao was an experience I wouldn't like to repeat - it jumped about 10 foot in the air across the waves for the duration of the crossing. At least half the people aboard were sick (me included) but the stewards where always ready to pounce on you with a supply of sick bags and tissue paper. All of this whilst a dodgy copy of The Dark Night was playing on the screen above us (although you couldn't hear it above the groans of people being sick).
The worst 2 hours of my
life over and we arrived at our resort on Koh Tao. The sun still wasn't quite out, but it was certainly trying. Koh Tao is the diving capital of Thailand and is a lot more chilled out the Koh Samui. I quite enjoyed the atmosphere on the island and Pam was definitely ready for some lazy beach time. We didn't really get up to much apart from walking along the beach, eating great Thai food and watching fire shows with a couple of cocktails (maybe a few too many on the last night judging by the state we were in on the last day).
We jumped on the ferry and overnight train back to the mainland and Bangkok where we had a bit of a dilemma. The tour ended once we reached Bangkok train station so we had 5 more nights to fill before Pam returned home so we had a choice of going back to another resort or staying in Bangkok. We took a taxi to the Eastern Bus Station and before we knew it we were headed down to Koh Samet.
Koh Samet is a real tourist island about 3 hours south of Bangkok. I didn't
mind too much, I was quite happy walking up and down the beach or listening to audio books whilst Pam tried to get a tan. Because there's not much traffic on the island we hired a moped to get around which I think is probably the best thing we've done so far. Driving around the pot holed dirt tracks of the island was probably quite dangerous, but so much fun.
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