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43: Dangerous Indulgence

Friday, December 30th, 2005

I conclude Koh Samui is potentially dangerous 😉
I could get used to this… Sun, White Sandy Beach, Turquoise Waters and excellent Restaurants on the Beachfront which serve food all day and night.

During the day plenty of retailers pass you to sell BBQ’ed Fish, Chicken or Pork Skewers. BBQed Corn on the Cob is also very popular and then there are the fruit and ice cream sellers that have everything from fresh pinapple and mango to deliciously refreshing coconouts (for drinking rather than eating since they are green coconut and pretty much only coconut water… Hmmm.. Trouble is it’s so easy to be lazy and get eveerything brought to you whereever you aer lying on the beach that there is great danger of giving up all travel plans and simply enjoy life on Koh Samui 🙂

Well.. no worries I won’t but it is definitely a nice change to the hectic Bangkok experience.

Turns out I was lucky with staying at the Big Wave Resort since I have now found Marine Resort and it does not look very impressibve at all and is quite a bit further up north where the beach is not as nice.
Also I tried the Beach Restaurant at Big Wave and it’s the best Thai food I had sofar!
Their Tom Yum Soup with Prawns is awesome and for main course I chose a BBQed Red Snapper. Uh Oh Yum Yum 😀 It was incredible! For a start the fish was HUGE!!!. Never seen such a big red snapper before and I reckon it was between 30cm long but big&fat as well. Two people could have easily eaten that one without anything extra and I seriously struggled to finish it. It was BBQ’ed but not charred. Actually I was surprised how little it looked BBQed, it tasted fantastic though. You could realy taste the freshness.. very different from the Red Snapper back home. It came with a Lemon&Garlic Dip and some Tartar sauce which I tried briefly but I decided the fish tasted way too good to spoil it with any sauces.
Thanks to Rose I knew how to eat this for a start (For some reason my famuily never cooks fish at all so I had no idea what to do with fish until Rose showed me:-) Rose would be proud of me: I learned well and even dared to eat the little meat on the fish head 🙂

Anyway so by now you surely believe me that the Restaurant and the Seafood is pretty darn good 😉

So what’s to moan (Since I’m known for moaning..)?
Well not much… it gets dark too early on Koh Samui. Sun is down by 18:30 at the latest. Very strange since for me Hot Sun = Summer = Bright until Late so it being pitch black by 19:00 just seems odd. But I can live with it 🙂

And of course Koh Samui and the Beaches and all is really a bit too romantic to spend time here on my own.. the long evenings don’t help I guess and it’s a little strange going to restaurants on my own. Bangkok was easy since I used street vendors or street restaurants. Never anything fancy. The places here are a little bit more on the romantic side so it feels a bit strange.

Nevermind thought I will get used to it. In fact I could really get used to this place and spend more time on these islands than I initially planned. Once I get my Dive Course sorted and see all the amazing marine life firsthand I might struggle to leave the islands 😉 Eeek.. maybe I should go to the north first and then come back here to do the PADI Dive course…

PS: Weather is nice of course. It seems to rain during the night a bit but sofar by the time I get up it is all sunny and warm again. During the day sometimes it gets a bit cloudy but it does not matter as it’s still very warm (around 28C I reckon) .

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42: Koh Samui Arrival

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

Note: I’m using the worst keyboard you could imagine so excuse spelling mistakes in particular in this post..

Arrived in Koh Samui – hooray 🙂

I flew from Bangkok with 6am departure. Had to leave Big John’s Hostel at 3:30am so only got a few hours of sleep. Catching a taxi was easy enough even at that time of the night.

The sun was shining on arrival at 7am. After several attempts to book a place online (everything I tried was fuly booked) I eventually managed to call a Bungalow Resort directly yesterday and reserve a place in Chaweng, the biggest beach on Koh Samui but in the northern part which is a quieter corner.

Got a minibus from Airport to Resort. Paid 100 Baht for the luxury and got dropped off on the main road with a remark “Resort somewhere back there…”. “Sorry where exacly?” I asked but the driver was off already… *bother*

I had no idea where to go but pack on my back walked around a bit. Natually no signs so I asked people about the resort. They had no heard of it. I showed them the name and address on a piece of paper and they said “oh yes just back there down the road.. 500m”
So I walked down there but no sign of my resort. Stopped again and asked, now they said “go back over there.. just 20 steps” (“yeah right” I thought but I did go back nevertheless) There was what looked like a bunch of bungalows and a restaurant at the back next to the beach but the place was called Big Wave.

I went up anyway and said hello. Asked if it was the Marine Bungalows and some guy said “yes yes”. I said I have reservation, he looked funny and went to ask someone. came back eventually and said “no room”. I said I called the day before and I had reservation. That did seem to help as he now said it was ok and asked me to sit down.. A few minutes a woman came and said the room would not be available until 5pm.. well not much a problem I thought I can hang out on the beach (actually breakfast sounded nice since I was sitting in their beach restaurant by then).

Eventually an hour later the woman came over and said the Bungalow was ready and I could have a look. Great! Bungalow looked pretty good, spacious, Kingsize Bed, TV, Fridge, clean Bathroom and Air Conditioning so I moved in.

On checking I paid for a week and then the woman gave me a card of the place.
The card also mentioned “Big Wave” not “Marine Bungalows” and I did not recognised the phone number as the one I dialled when I made the reservation. Hmm..
I knew that Marine B. had recently bought Lazy Wave Resort nextdoor from it so I asked if they had changed name of the now bigger resort, seemed logical. Turns out that they have not and it has been Big Wave for 6-7 years. They never were Marine Bungalows!

Well it doesn’t matter I thought. the place is nice enough and costs the same as Marine Bungalows. Looks like I was lucky though cause I would have had to search for that other Resort otherwise and it was bl**dy hot by then and backpack way too heavy for trying to find a resort on foot 😉

Anyway the place is pretty nice for the money (1200 Baht a day is very reasonable for Samui in December, most places charge double or more), the beach restaurant looks good too and I stay pretty much right on the beach 🙂 Can’t get much better…

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