Koh Samui

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All partied out from Koh Phagnan, the lads and I decided that we should take the short boat journey to Koh Samui for some well earned rest...

The boat from Haad Rin pier cost around a fiver at 250 baht and comprised of fairly uncomfortable wooden benches, a far cry from the Lomprayah catamaran we used to get from Koh Tao to Koh Phagnan. However, this slower journey suited our stomaches somewhat better than the much faster Lomprayah (Gibbo was particularly thankful!). The journey itself was fairly aside from witnessing a waif-like man risk life and limb to climb down from the top deck to the seating deck just to try to sell me a sex and the city DVD. He really wanted to sell that DVD.

Upon arrival into Samui we decided that we were not going to be held to ransom by the minibus and taxi drivers who wanted to charge seemingly extortionate amounts to take us to the main holiday resort location of Chaweng. The smart travelers that we now are, we tried to flag down the "taxi meter" cabs as we knew the journey was not far, however it turns out that the term "taxi meter" desribes the cabs loosely at best as it was really down to whether the cab driver whether you were allowed to go on the meter or not...largely the case was the latter and a standard charge of 400baht was offered. After plenty of walking, we managed to bluff our way to negotiating a fee of 300baht but in fairness the bartering was more a matter of principle than price.

Upon arrival into Chaweng we grabbed a spot of lunch by the beach and then thudded our way up to Anong guesthouse, a place that had been recommended to us as it was cheap and had free wifi. It had been mentioned that it got fairly loud at night but for 700baht for a room for one night, none of us were complaining (at least for the time being).

We spent some time on the beach on what was a fairly overcast day, Jake and I went for a massage and I bought an ice cream from an all singing all dancing elvis impersonator. By night we indulged in the Thai version of Nando's, aptly named Piri Piri Chicken and perused the night markets looking for a cheap deal on anything remotely interesting just to take our thoughts away from the putrid smells which wafted up from the open sewers (I thought Bangkok smelt bad!!). After losing track of time and our general sense of direction we meandered our way back through the night stalls to our room suspecting that we may not spend much longer in Chaweng as the overtly touristy and seedy nature of the place were not what we had gone there for. Our suspicions were confirmed as the room appeared to be positioned withing shaking distance of a Chaweng superclub which blazed over the sounds of our ipods on full volume. Sleeping became nigh on impossible and the sound of Rihanna (who the Thai's seem to love almost as much as Gibbo) presiding over Give me shelter by the Stones just added insult to injury.

We left for Khao Sok the next day...

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