Our journey to the island of Koh Samui started in Bangkok (our one day stop over). Without even stepping onto the island we were already impressed. (Slightly off the point but quite useful: I would definitely recommend to you all that you go and purchase the Fish Eye Pro app for your iPhones. This app cost me 69p a few Januarys ago and has been so useful! Yeah the photos are a bit lame and hipster, but if you are into cool fish-eye lenses and rainbow filters then i'm sure you'll enjoy it.)
The view from the plane was beautiful and even the airport on the island was quaint. (The hut, 3 photos down, yess that's the airport.)
Everything on this island was simple, well priced and effortless. We rented a moped to get around the island. I won't lie to you, I have never been at all licensed to drive any sort of vehicle legally, but to the cool moped rental guys this was no problem. I just handed over my crappy provisional licence and off we drove. We were on a no damage no fee agreement; as long as the moped came back un harmed, they didn't really care if we were licensed or not.
Renting the bike was the equivalent to £19 between us for....THE WHOLE WEEK! And filling up the tank cost 40p. An incredible contrast to the prices in England. I would definitely recommend moped rental to anyone who goes to Koh Samui.
Sam (travel companion mentioned in the Bangkok post) and I were staying at 6 Senses Spa. A romantic getaway for any loved up couple. (Yeah perfect for two adolescent teenage girls who are close, but are very much not loved up). We did get a few funny looks from the obviously honeymooning couples staying at the resort, but we just congratulated them and amused ourselves away from the resort during the day. The breakfast at the resort however; we definitely stayed for. We were treated to a buffet style feast every morning. Any fruit you can possibly imagine, homemade bread, fresh juices, Thai, Chinese and Japanese breakfasts and they even had time to cook (their take on) baked beans for us plebby British lot. This was an elegant, daily ordeal.
The view from the restaurant...and the infinity pool...
The best day on the island was the same day we rented the moped. After renting the moped we went for a little drive to test out my non existent driving skills, this is when I realised that with the little-to-no moped practice I had that it was about 90% impossible for me to turn the moped around. I missed a turning we needed and I decided that it wasn't going to be an option to turn around at all so we would have to just drive around the whole island until we looped back around to the turning we needed again. So on our giant de-tour around the island, we got about half way and noticed a sign to some waterfalls. We followed it and ended up at an Elephant safari place. This was awesome because Elephants. I had never seen an Elephant in my life before so being in touching distance from these giant, majestic creatures was awesome. I was slightly heart broken however on my return to England to find out about how poorly treated the Elephants are in this industry. It just helps to do your research guys, because you never know what cruel trade your money could be supporting when you go abroad. I guess karma kinda hit me back, because after the Elephant expedition Sam and I trekked through botanical gardens and up a very steep incline (in flipflops) to a natural waterfall pool at the top of a mountain. How was this karma hitting me back you say...? Well it was here that I lost one of my most beloved pieces of jewellery. Very stupid to take my best jewellery on holiday with me, but anyone who knows me well will know that I wear a certain set of silver bracelets and rings all the time. I jumped off a rock into the 9 meter deep pool, scraped my arm on the way down, which pulled off a bangle that my parents had given to me for starting uni. It wasn't at all expensive but it was very meaningful to me. I guess this was my gift to the gods of the mountain.
Correct me if i'm wrong, Koh Samui is in the Angthong nation marine park; which is made up of 42 tropical islands. This provides plenty of coral reefs, caves and blue lagoons to explore. As a keen kayaker I couldn't think of anything better than exploring this coast line by kayak. Daily boat trips run from the main local islands so Sam and I booked a boat trip which stopped off at several islands and also gave us the chance to snorkel and kayak. Not a very adventurous way to discover the national park, but as we were on a tight budget it suited us fine. As you can see from the photos below the islands looked like a Tom Hanks cast away tropical paradise, making it particularly heartbreaking to leave by boat at the end of the day.
Going in September means one thing: MONSOON SEASON. By now you must be getting a clear impression about how chilled out the moped rental guys were. So chilled they didn't give us visors on our helmets. This is problematic when you are about 30 minutes from where you are staying; driving down and hill and suddenly the worst rain you have ever seen hits you. I was suddenly faced with the tough decision: do I either, drive with my sunglasses on; protecting my eyes from the rain hitting them, but making it significantly darker than the heavy rain clouds are already making it. Or do I drive with no sunglasses on, which means my eyes are exposed to the impact of the rain, but it isn't too dark to see the road. Either meant I had to drive at about 5mph. Long story short, we got HELLA soaked.
This now brings me nicely to the story about the slicing of my knee.
Going to a beach party in Thailand doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you a stereotype of a tourist in Thailand. On the Friday of our week and a bit in Koh Samui Sam and I drove to Chaweng beach and started our night at ARK bar. Drinks were well priced (as expected) and very strong! The bar staff there are much more generous than bar staff in London. Here we danced to a mix of Avicii, house and sax music. It was pretty chill. A few drinks down and we started making interesting friends. Life tip: taking a photo of an Australian dude in budgie smugglers that say "budgie smugglers" will break the ice pretty quickly. It was after this point that the night was pretty much a blur. We met some cool people from the four corners of the Earth and then ended up in a bar with a name that is something to do with a fruit (still cannot remember). Here I ended up behind the DJ booth chatting to DJ Yuki (somehow?) and then we trekked back to the beach. I decided to go on a fantastic drunken swim in the sea. There is Coral in the sea in Koh Samui and said coral made light work of slicing up my knee. At least the silver lining in this all (sort of) is that I was too intoxicated to feel what had happened to my knee so the night ended un-traumatically. Although my knee is still scarred. A scar in which I like to consider as a small souvenir from my time in Thailand.
Sunset on our perfect last day in Koh Samui.
H x
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