Saschas World

I was supposed to leave Koh Samui tomorrow but I extended my stay by a few days at least.
For now I might leave on Saturday the 7th but I just wanted to get a few more days to decide what to do next. There is still lots I have not seen or done on Koh Samui so I hang around for a bit longer until I can make up my mind.

It’s just too convenient here, beach, food, venturing out… plus I have not decided when to do the PADI course yet though it looks like I will move to Koh Tao for this. Got prices for Koh Samui PADI Course and it’s almost twice of what I would have to pay in Koh Tao.

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Originally uploaded by saschas.

It is a struggle with those pictures but I’m slowly getting there so here is my first attempt to post a picture to my blog

Thought this one would be a good one to start with 🙂

Happy New Year 2006 Boat off Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui.

PS: There is more over on flicker where I will store my pictures for now (small versions of them since the disk space at flickr.com is very limited) Just click on the picture aboe to jump to flickr for more pictures if you like.

Took a trip down the south-east coast of Koh Samui today.

Weather was great and I was tempted to just hit the beach but did manage to get my acts together, grab my scooter and hit the road.

See the Map to follow the route.

Started off from my Resort (Big Wave) in North Chaweng and drove though Chaweng towards Lamai Beach. I could not resist to have alook at the beach so I stopped for an hour or two and walked along Lamai Beach from the norther end all teh way to the southern end. The beach itself is not too back. The sand in the middle part is quite fine and similar to Chaweng Beach but I think the sand was brought as sand near the water and further to the south gets a bit coarser. Overall the beach seems considerably quiter which is nice (no busy music blasting bars as in the middle of Chaweng) but there seems to be quite a but of rubbish on the beach and in the water as well. A shame really that the resorts don’t clean the beach though it may well be that the debris/rubbish is due to the recent rain and bad weather. There is noticeably more damage to resorts close to the beach just as on Bo Phut beach in the north.
The southern end of the beach towards Hin Da Hin Yai (Grandmother & Granfather Rock) is rather empty and not very nice to look at. Not a place I would want to stay.

Once I hit the end of the beach I walked up a few big rocks toward Grandmother/father Rock view point. Niceish view but there are much better views on the way to Lamai;-) (Yes I took some pictures but they are not here yet;-)

From there I took a little stroll into the wildernis on a little path towards Samui Resoprt in Hoa Thanon.
Lots of Butterflies there along the path, tried to take some pictures but mostly the little buggers are way too quick fluttering about;-) I saw about 10 different types including some huge black ones with white dots on the back end of their wings. Oh and at some point a big fat ping-pong ball sized humming beetle (I think) came flying towards me and I had to duck to avoid it *yuck* 😉 I heard a lot of birds and tried to find them in the trees but no luck, they were well hidden. Some sounded like mackacs (parot types) and I tried hard to find them but soon I realised that my legs were being attacked by a swarm of mosquitos and I quickly made an exit 🙂 back to Lamai Beach.

On with the Scooter further south I tried to find the Overlap Stone View Point just after Lamai Beach only to find that the road up the hill had been washed away by the floods a few weeks back. Back on the main road I found an alternative route signposted to the Overlap Stone Viewpoint but this time it was a dirt track and after 10 mins or so I hit a steep hill where the whole track had been seriously washed out and there was no chance to go any further *bother*. I am planning to go to some other mountain areas nearby tomorrow and I wonder if the roads just just as bad there. It would be a shame because there are some nice waterfalls apparently that are worth a visit.

For now I gave up on the inland tracks and stayed near the coast. Took the route further down to check out some other little beaches marked on the map.

Silver Beach is tiny but seems quite pleasant. They have nice bungalows built into the hills next to the bay (pictures), the sand on the beach is quite nice and the water seems much clearer then elsewhere. Good for snorkelling I reckon.

Went to the most southern point Thong Krut before heading back since it started to get dark.

On the way back I stopped at Restaurant which has a pretty spectacular view down a cliff towards the whole Bay of Lamai and Chaweng . Had some Thai food and then drove back home.

Right now my internet cafe closes so I that’s that for today.. and still no pictures in my posts ;-(

Happy New Year Everyone 🙂

I’m still in Koh Samui and despite many (thousands) of people having gone to Koh Phangan (about 15km off Koph Samui) for the New Year Party I didn’t bother and stayed put on Koh Samui. No regrets though because the Beach Party here was pretty nice.

There were plenty of shows on along Chaweng Beach where I stay. Most resorts had special Gala Dinners for their guests combined with Live Bands, Cabarets and other performances. Where there were no live bands (at the smaller resorts) they had DJs playing music. Drinks and Food plenty as usual.

The Beach looked pretty amazing with lots of fairy lights put up on trees, candles everywhere (plenty of beach restarants had tables out and quite a few – how shall I call it.. essentially reclining chairs/beds with little tables inbetween where you could lie down and have dinner on the beach..

Best of all though was a rather nice practice of releasing flying lanterns (mini hotair balloon thingies) into the air. Don’t know what they are called but they looked like a little metal frame to hold a little petroleum soaked cloth at the bottom and above a thing plastic bag. Once they lit the cloth the hot air filled the plastic bag and a few seconds later the whole thing took off into the sky.
It looked really nice and curiously the lanterns followed the shape of the beach and were visible for ages.
You could see a whole stream of them flying higher and higher forming a line and eventually air currents changed their route but thei still all neatly seemed to fly in line behind each other.

Once it turned midnight the fireworks started all over the beach. Fabulous display, nothing grand like in Edinburgh during the festival or back home during Rhein in Flammen but the fact that the fireworks wnt off along the whole kilometer long beach and lasted for about an hour I reckon made it pretty spectacular.

Overall a very nice experience and the lanterns were definitely the highlight.

Hired a Scooter today and drove around the northern part of Koh Samui a bit.

I only left around lunch time as the sky became a bit overcast and the beach wasn’t that appealing anymore. So I left my resort in North Chaweng just opposite Samui International Hospital if you check the area map. Strangely enough on this map the resort is not listed (its between Amari and Muang) but also the airport is no way where it’s marked!
I certainly don’t hear airplanes going over my bungalow and in fact the planes fly over mid Chaweng Beach about 1km south rather than where my resort is. One of the reasons why I was rather lucky to stay in this resort! But more on Samui Beaches in a different post.

So I took the main road along the cost (road 4171) towards Choeng Mon, the north eastern corner of the island. There are a few small beaches which I stopped at, the biggest of them near Koh Farn Noi, a tiny island opposite the beach.

Even this biggest of the Choeng Mon Beaches had quite a different feel to it compared to Chaweng.
Very few people were there, bunglaows a bit more worn and looking rather like old wooden huts. There was not much happening in terms of catering which can be good or bad depending on whether you want any food/drinks or not;-) The sand was quite nice and so was the water.

To bo continued.. (sorry I put pictures on flickr.com which took a good while)

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) .

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…

Went down to the big Chao Praya River today and took the Express Boat from Central Pier to Tha Saphan Phut. This is where the Flower and Vegetable Market is. Spend about two hours walking around all the stalls with loads and loads of different vegetables. Looked all very nice and fresh. Lots of veggies I have not seen before, same for fruits but there were more veggies. There were naturally shedloads of fresh Chili in various sizes and buckets full of Garlic, Ginger, Lemongrass and other odd root vegetables. I could smell the fresh soil they were still covered in. Two trucks were just unloading Pinapples.. never seen such big pinapples.. sadly they were for distribution to stalls but I did not see any stall that sold them or I would have bought one. Talking of Garlic again they interestingly don’t sell whole bunches of garlic but individual cloves sorted by size and quality and sold at different prices.

Flower Market was right there next to the Vegetabe Market and they had mostly flowers chained together for their prayers at Budda Temples or Sprit Shrines. I didn’t see too many unusual flowers though and was expecting a big display of Orchid Varieties according to my Guide Book. Maybe I was in the wrong Area.

Afterwards I went a bit up north in that Area to the Indian Market. A whole area devoted to selling electronic DIY thingies (plugs, sockets, cables, screws, electronic parts..) and many stalls seemed to repair old amplifiers, TVs or other electronic devices. Don’t know how they manage because all they seemed to have available was a soldering iron and spare parts. Didn’t see any instruments to investigate a fault so they must just go by luck replacing this and that and see if it works again 🙂

Then on to the Indian Clothes Market. Wanted to look for that famous Thai Silk. Prices were about 5 GBP (7-8 Euros) per square meter for 1-ply thai silk (the thinnest they sell). Strangely that silk was still considerably thicker than my silk sleep sheet that mom got me for my trip (Thank You!! I really need it in the hostels and am glad I have this with me!). I asked if they had any thinner silk than what they call the 1-ply silk and they said no. I reckon the really thin silk is more expensive or maybe a different kind of silk..

Oh and I popped into a Japanese Restaurant at Siam Center on the way back and had some Sushi and Terriyaki Beef. The Sushi pieces were the biggest ones I have ever seen. They were at least twice as big as we are used. I had a 9-piece Sushi Set and was really struggling to eat it all and I still had the Territyaki Beef.. Rather stuffed now;-) Overall the lot set me back a staggering 5 pounds (7.50 Euros). This is the most expensive food I have eaten sofar.

Right this is the last from Bangkok for a while. I will go and pack my stuff now so I can head off to Koh Samui early tomorrow morning. (I send an email blog about this but it does not seem to have hit my blog page yet.. as I said this email blogging seems a bit flaky and sometimes email blogs take a few days to appear)

This blog system is doin’ my head in! The message below was emailed to my blog space days ago and it still has not come up so I add it manually for now… Might be time to look for another blog site soon…
– – –

Right, Bangkok visit is coming to an end..
I managed to find a last mintue special deal for a flight to Koh Samui.

I fly out on the 28th Dec for about 30 GBP (~45 Euros). I don’t know
yet where I am going to stay an this might only become clear when I
get there but I have a whole day to search for a place since I will
arrive around 7 O’Clock in the morning.

I tried a few online reservations but as expected they are fully
booked. Never mind apparently (and I bl**dy well hope so) it’s easy
enough to find a cheap place to stay without prior booking….

Koh Samui is also a bit of a gamble at the moment because they had a
LOT of rain there recently and Thunderstorms as we speak. Still the
forecast is sunny from mid week onwards to everybody PLEASE CROSS
FINGERS that I don’t end up lying in the rain on that nice white beach
😉