42: Koh Samui Arrival
Wednesday, December 28th, 2005Note: 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…
Source: www.amazing-thailand.com 
saschas