Pema Djougne Ko Samui

... the original inhabitants of the island, known as 'Chao
Samui', are predominantly Buddhist. In the past, most of the locals
made their living in the coconut farming business. Nowadays, however,
most work in jobs related to tourism.
Many locals ...

The day we were leaving Sumatra coincided with the day that our friend Keith was going back to Koh Samui for ten days. Tracey's sister, Suzy, had also just returned to Samui after spending the summer in Europe. Samui is pretty "close" to Sumatra so we decided to backtrack and fly back to visit them both before continuing with our round-the-world ticket. Unfortunately, when we came to book the flights, we discovered that flying from ...

... win * prize"! Turns out you h*ve to sit through * 2 hour "present*tion" on timesh*re holid*y shen*****ns before you get your prize (which you h*ve to p*y for *nyw*y). The first time we were * bit curious to find out *bout wh*t it w*s *ll *bout so we went *long with it.

I *lso h*d my feet nibbled by * g*zillion fish :-) Felt weird! See the pic (I c*n see you squirming now Mum)

We went to * quiz nite l*st night *t *n ...

... pulled up to my belly button They sat us on the beach away from the cheesy background cover band singing happy birthday and waving to me from across the restaurant. The table was about 7 feet from the water. The night could not have been more perfect.
We're on a perfect white sand beach where the waves barely lick the shoreline. You can lie on your back in the water, stare into the infinite blue and never get swamped. It ...

... feathered friend, sit next to the beach and eat and there is like no body on the beach by the way...the water does not even have a ripple....only the odd jogger goes by....just to add to our guilt level I am sure. Great weather day so time to chill by the pool before it gets too hot.....ahhhh....is good.....now we can only take at most an hour or hour and a half as we would burn to a crisp...and that is with sp 30 on...its is so intense ...

... so nice to watch the sun come up and go for a swim in the sea, if a bit random! The next day was a bit of a write off..... Ian literally could not get out of bed but I somehow managed to drag myself down to the beach for a spot of sunbathing! Our hotel had a lovely little DVD room with all of the latest films so a bunch of us vegged out all evening watching films! The day after full moon, some of us decided to take a trip round the island... first stop was ...

... to contact one, a guy called Ryan who got back to us pretty quickly. Funnily enough he was house sitting a bungalow on the beach for a guy he had couch surfed with for two weeks. The beauty of the concept being that you stay with people who have local knowledge, you get to meet new and interesting people and all the other little bonuses such as free accommodation, use of a kitchen etc. So Ryan (from Canada) met us at the pier, we grabbed ...

... the water like there was in Koh Samui three years earlier. After a quick swim, we hit the showers and then decided to take the bike into the nearest town on the island, Baan Tai. The town had a 7/11, a drug store, a number of permanent restaurants and clothing stores, and street vendors selling fast foods. The prices at the permanent restaurants were much higher than other places we had been in Thailand, with pad thai and fried rice costing 90 baht and other dishes ...

... s roads are extremelly busy, and dangerous, particularly late afternoon. Since there is an immigration office in Ko Samui, we also took the opportunity to extend Nuno's visa by 7 days, as we were begining to feel that 1 month in Thailand was a bit too short. Having a set of wheels for a couple of days, we managed to visit a few nice places on the island - Wang Sao Thong Waterfall, which was really not that impressive, but the view from the hill above was ...

... and rob us or something, hahaha, but thankfully he didn't. We got to the airport and surprise surprise it only came to 205 baht! Ha ha! He didn't even bother to get out of the cab and help us with our bags, b*stard! I smiled sweetly and gave him his money! ;-) We were fed up of being ripped off purely for being tourists and weren't going to let him get away with it! The next palava was my ticket to Samui. We had both booked it online but as I did mine ...