We were supposed to fall in love with Koh Samui, one of the biggest and most beautiful islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Backpackers “discovered” the island back in the 1970s and since then tourism has become the mainstay of the island’s economy. It’s easy to understand why: the water can be spectacularly blue and the beaches are long and white. There are accommodations to meet any need – you can stay in a backpacker hostel or spend $1,000 a night on an entry-level room at the Four Seasons Samui.
To be sure, we had a great four days here. Our resort is beautiful, with some great outdoor spaces to lounge in. Fortunately some of the outdoor area is protected by roofs, as the weather was pretty uncooperative, with rain and clouds over the last two days. Today we’re leaving (we actually wanted to stay one more day, but the hotel is full today) so of course it’s beautiful again.
We keep having to learn that one of the keys to a great hotel is location, location. This resort is beautiful, but away from most everything. So we rented scooters to get to the beach and around the island, which was entertaining in its own way. Ultimately, though, I never felt as though I really got to know Samui; I just always felt like an outsider in the various places we went to. Location, location, location.
From here we move down to Krabi for a few days on the beach on the Andaman Sea, the west coast of the peninsula, and then we hop down to Singapore. And now we’re rethinking the plans to go to Korea and Japan in the spring; we may end up in Indonesia after all. Stay tuned…
At any rate, here’s what we saw in Koh Samui.
Fortunately we got some sun the first day we were on the island. This is lunch and I was pretty happy.
The pool and sea at our resort, but there was no actual beach here.
Just outside our hotel, where they charged $15 for a glass of wine (seriously) was the local five-table restaurant, Stop@SOPA. Once we discovered it we ate here the last three nights. Great food, great prices, fun place, though you have to be something of a tech geek to appreciate the humor of the logo.
The cook in her kitchen. They greeted us almost like family by the third night.
Chaweng Beach is the main beach on the island. Big and beautiful but unfortunately not beach weather this day.
Chaweng Beach, though as you might be able to tell from the picture not exactly beach weather.
Fisherman’s Village was on the other side of the island from Chaweng Beach, so we’d hop on our scooters to go there for lunch. Apparently it used to be an actual fisherman’s village, but now it’s full of shops great little restaurants.
Mark had an array of cute kitties to play with on Samui. This one was appearing in Phantom of the Opera…
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