Operation Koh Samui

Trip Start Jul 10, 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Where I stayed

Smile HouseResort Ko Samui

(Nathon hotels)

Flag of Thailand Bo Phut, Koh Samui, Thailand
Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Salad days are over. After a long stay on the beach it's time to move on. We piled into the back of our jeep and headed, forlornly, towards Thongsala (Phangan's biggest and only town) to hop on a boat to Koh Samui. At least we were meeting our friends Barry and Claire there. Hitching a free ride in the back of our truck was a wobbly-headed Brazilian covered in cuts and bruises who epitomised everything about some of the backpackers who hang around on Koh Phangan waiting for each of the moon parties.

I'd seen him and his chain smoking missus knocking around the beach huts. I noticed him most mornings when he was picking up a Beer Chang for breakfast. Our truck driver, one of the lovely young fellas from Haad Salad Villas was telling us that he'd crashed 3 bikes so far (not surprisingly, he'd wobbled passed us on a bike one afternoon with eyes half shut) - which explained all the cuts - and that he was been taken to an ATM to get money out for the 3 crashed bikes and his room, which he hadn't paid for in 30 days

Clouds over Koh Phangan, from Samui

. We felt a bit sorry for him really, he seemed a bit lost, and sober for a change, plus he had a lot of seriously painful cuts.

Anyway, that aside, our boat trip was uneventful and we landed in Koh Samui and headed to Bo Phut, where we'd meet Barry and Claire. From what we've heard, Bo Phut is one of the nice beaches on Samui, but it was a bit of a shock for us. We've been too long on laid back Koh Phangan and the cars and bustle around the beach was a bit much, not to mention the prices - twice that of Phangan!

Still, we shacked up in the very nice Smile House hotel near the "Fisherman's Village" (there hasn't been a fisherman living in this village for a long long time) and started to enjoy the place pretty quickly.

We were meeting the lads for dinner, and Barry had booked us a lovely table looking over the sea in a posh restaurant. It was strange, having a restaurant booking and meeting people at an allotted time was weird. We're long out of practice. But it was great to see the lads - we'd missed their wedding, we weren't going to miss the honeymoon! We ended up heading out and around Bo Phut with the lads for the three nights we were there. It was great craic, catching up on news and actually talking to someone who'd been at our wedding. Well the first night we caught up, then the second night we reminded each other what it was that we'd said the previous night, and by the third night we'd run out of conversation.

After 3 short days of pools and relaxing and buckets of beer we're off back to Bangkok, and our final stop in South East Asia. How weird. Although, it looks like we'll be having some fun before we go. We're hearing lots of stories of protests and airport closures across Bangkok at the moment. Back to the real world so.