Activity Summary
Wednesday 5th October - Day 34
Travel (bus + ferry) from Khlong Sok to Koh Samui
Cabaret show
Live music
Fire show
Thursday 6th October - Day 35
Lamai beach walk
Grandfather & Grandmother rocks
Lamai viewpoint
Fisherman’s village
Summary
Koh Samui is a very popular island for the beach and chill holiday while having quite a lot to offer in party and drinking. We really didn’t get to enjoy any of the beaches much so we made do with filling our days with whatever activities we could in the not so great weather that didn’t involve just vegging out at a bar / restaurant. Overall we would say we did as much as we could before we would have gotten bored (seemed like we were really forcing activities) so we were happy to move on.
Accommodation
Lenny’s Koh Samui - 2 nights - 568THB/n/p
Never ever book this place.
We booked this because it was the cheapest place in the area with alright reviews and Luke was sold a pipe dream. Live and learn.
Travel
TO
Khlong Sok hostel -> [taxi] -> Khlong Sok bus station -> [minivan] -> Surat Thani -> [transfer to another minivan] -> Donsak pier -> [ferry] -> Nathon Pier -> [Minivan] -> Koh Samui hotel
Diary
We set off from Khlong Sok at a pleasant time in the morning and the first leg was hilariously short by dropping us off 2 minutes down the road at the Khlong Sok bus terminal. From here we were shepherded into a minivan after a short wait and rode out the longish journey (part in parcel because of the lack of main road from the national park) to Surat Thani. Once again everyone on the bus was completely baffled about who was getting off when and where despite all going to the same island and the driver failing to ease our confusion apart from saying ‘no’ when we tried to get off the bus. But again, the man had a plan and we ended up at the correct travel agent.
We arrived with about an hour to wait for the next bus so Nicola went first to get cash and some lunch while Luke remained with the gear. She was gone for about 20 minutes before Luke set off thinking he had plenty of time. 10 minutes into his expedition and waiting in 7-11 for his iced coffee and cheese toasties gets told the bus is here 30 minutes early and wanting to take off. Luke panic walks / runs back trying not to spill his refreshing iced coffee and then proceeds to spend the next hour on the bus to the pier trying to cool down again and not overly happy with the situation but Nicola is fierce and Luke’s sure she would have held the bus up if required. We will see whether this comradery lasts the rest of the trip.
Once at the ferry terminal, we confirm where to go easily enough and board in good time. The ferry is a monster so any risk of Nicola being ill or likely crashing of said vessel is very low. Safely on the island, we quickly find the guy from the travel company and set off with a full minivan around Koh Samui island and the various hotel drop offs. Nicola at this point has a headache and the hangry demon has had a full blown awakening. Luke hides in silence.
It took a long ol while to get from the west side of the island to Chaweng in the east, so once we were dropped off at our hotel, we ignored its glaring deficiencies for now and hit the nearest Thai restaurant. Now Nicola was feeling very faint at this point and while her awakening happened on the bus this came into full fire breathing rage at the restaurant when she chewed out the waitress, who was probably being a little slow, but certainly didn’t warrant the huffing and puffing coming from the dragon in the corner. Luke politely confirmed Nicola didn’t want any spice with her massaman curry on her behalf while Nicola had her head on the table. After returning with some sugary drinks Nicola managed to return to the land of the living and confirm she shouldn’t have been quite so sassy with the poor waitress who probably had absolutely no idea what she had done wrong so quickly with a new customer. At least it wasn’t at Luke. Eventually Nicola was fed and all was (sort of) better in the world. (Comment from Nicola- we'd eaten nothing all day except a handful of noodle and it was 4pm, my hanger puts me at an evolutionary advantage where by I'm ready to fight for food- what's a girl to do!?)
We returned to the hotel to have a full assessment of the shithole Luke had decided to book for us. We opted to stay in Chaweng because it was a popular place with a lot of bars and restaurants. Luke didn’t quite envisage this being quite so offensive when he booked the place however. The first room we were offered backed onto the main road and a giant neon ‘hotel’ sign at the base of the window was destined to be a pain in the ass. Already able to hear loud noises from the street, Luke asked whether there was a free room at the back of the hotel which was successful. We could still hear a bit of noise but it was nowhere near as bad, nor would we expect to hear the live music bars opposite the hotel.
Turns out none of this mattered at all. Right underneath the hotel was one of these live music bars that had a full rock band set up and much like Luke’s childhood listening to his brother Adam smashing away at his drums and laying on the ‘tunes’ with his various bands, would have no hope of sleeping until the music stopped reverberating through the floor. We were on the 3rd floor and it was still clear as day. Turns out this stopped sometime past 1am so we had no choice but to try and stay up as late as we could.
Fortunately for us Chaweng, while not overly glamorous, had plenty to keep us busy for the evening. We walked around the area to get a feel for it and turns out it really is a weird split between quite nice and seedy Vegas vibes. There was a really nice shopping mall area (Thailand seems to really have these nailed) which had a monster Waitrose in it (breakfast sorted) and nice bars and restaurants. Go round the corner close to the beach and the Main Street is lit up with tragic looking sports bars, strip clubs and even a hooters.
Citing that we will greatly miss the massages once we are done with Thailand, we opted for a oil neck and back massage which was so good and so painful at the same time.
Post getting beaten up, we stumbled across a free cabaret show (free in the sense that drinks were extortionate) which was great fun and very very bad but well worth the viewing. Honestly cannot tell who was male or female.
At the entrance to the shopping mall was an incredibly talented live musician so we grabbed a drink from the pop up bar next to him and chilled for a bit. Nearing 11pm we went back to the hotel room and then truly understood the impact of the live music under our bedroom floor. Thinking this finished at 12pm we walked over to Chaweng beach and stumbled across a beach bar with fire show performers so sat and chilled here. Nicola was quite keen with filming the group who took note of this and then subsequently chased her and the rest of the camera warriors with spinning balls of fire which was very entertaining to watch as they squealed. The best bit was Nicola getting her eyebrows down as she lay filming… turns out fire is very warm and bright hence the facial expressions below.
Turns out the music finishes after 1am but both of us were shattered and had both earplugs and noise cancelling headphones on so by this point the noise didn’t affect us at all.
There were no surprises really when we surfaced at 10.30am. Many of the main tourist attractions for the south islands are the many beaches and chill days that are on offer. Turns out in order to have one of these days, sunshine is an absolute pre-requisite and we hadn’t see any of that since the Phi Phi islands (nor would we get a glorious day for the rest of the Thailand trip).
With grey skies permanently in tow and the ever impending downpours likely to happen at any moment we settled on going to Lamai beach and the British carpe diem attitude of rain ain’t no thang. Koh Samui is quite a big island and on the drive around in the minivan the day before, Nicola didn’t like how busy the roads were so we decided against the illegal scooter and opted for hailing songthaews. These are however incredibly easy to use here; hailable from the side of the road, incredibly frequent as they just go round the island in a circle and take you to exactly where you want to go. The only negative being they are comparatively very expensive but not break the bank spenny.
Once at Lamai beach we took a photo with the incredibly depressing sign, made more so by the grey clouds, and had a semi pleasant long walk along the beach. Nicola had the interesting opinion that in that current moment she would have preferred being on a UK beach as they are far more interesting and Luke at the time of writing this may actually agree. Again, the sun really does light up a beach. (Nicola's arguement being that they have more habitat variety in the UK with sand dunes, coves, cliffs ect -whilst here it's just a patch of sand backed by hotels)
Once at the end of the beach we made our way over to a viewpoint (off the cuff) called the Grandfather and Grandmother rocks. Basically it’s a rock penis and rock vagina which was amusing for 10 seconds. We actually couldn’t get close to the vag rock which was on the ground and very slippery so Luke found a better one as shown in the picture below.
Again, Luke making plans on the fly, saw there was a Lamai viewpoint so we made the quick 10 minute walk up to the cafe at the top. On the way was a valentine rock of which we had no idea why it was called this, and many inspirational signs which were probably the highlight. At the top we had a coffee and chill while enjoying some of that rare sunshine.
We jumped into a songthaew to the fisherman’s village in the north of the island to have a wonder around. This place was clearly a resort hotspot as the class of accommodation and restaurants improved about 10 fold from that of Chaweng and Lamai so made for a very pleasant place to grab some food, walk around the area and spend a few hours at Coco Tams which had a great catamaran-esc netted seating area over Bo Phut beach with some decent views and weather. The rain eventually forced us (and the beach bar) to move on back to Chaweng.
We had planned an evening very much similar to the night before, walking around the shops, bars and smashing falafel before heading to the beach fire show. Both of us however decided we could not be bothered at all so Nicola got a foot massage and Luke vegged out before we spent a good number of hours just waiting for the reverb to end.
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