Ko Samui...

Just a quick one on Ko Samui as it was mainly just a stop gap for Koh Phangan. I'd arranged to meet a few people on Samui and we were planning on heading to Phangan together; Tim and Cally from Ko Lanta and Matt from Buenos Aries.

I got picked up from Outside the hotel on Lanta at around 8am and driven across the South of Thailand to Dom Sak; which is the main pier to get the ferry across to Samui. I decided to pay to extra 100baht to go directly to Dom Sak rather than change in Krabi and would have put another 2 hours onto the journey. The ride to the pier took a few hours and we were crammed into the van like sardines with the bags just thrown in around us. The ferry was a lot better and a but more spacious! The wait for the ferry was about an hour and journey another hour and half; so I arrived in at the Western pier around 2.30 and took a local taxi the hour trip around the top of the island to the East side and the large town of Chaweng.  Tim and Cally had already found a decent hotel in the middle of Chaweng - called the Chaweng Palace - so I went straight there; bargained for a cheaper from and went to drop the bags off.  I know that it's not much to go by, but this was probably the nicest hotel room that I'd stayed in so far in the tour.  There was an enormous comfortable bed, large plasma TV, air con, proper power shower and to top it all of; another smaller bed that I dumped all of my stuff on.

I arranged to meet Tim and Cally at 7 in the reception to go for dinner and they took me to a nice Thai place near the hotel that they went to the previous night and had an amazing Mussaman Curry and a couple of beers catching up on the last week.  After dinner we went in search of a bar showing the Newcastle game for Tim, that was to be followed by the Spurs game for myself; which left Cally to drink herself into boredom.  We found the Duke Bar which was only 5 minutes from the hotel and - even better - 2 minutes from McDonalds!  We decided that as we'd be there for a while we'd get a beer tower rather than having to keep asking for more beers, and sat back to watch the football.  After both games we'd demolished the tower, headed to McDonalds for a Mega Mac meal and hit the sack.

The next morning, Tim and I had arranged to go for a jog along the beach at 9am to get a bit of exercise in before heading for a big week that will follow; however (and luckily for me) the heavens had opened considerably, therefore rain stopped play.  The rain didn't stop for about 4/5 hours, so instead of being able to spend an afternoon on the beach we had to find an alternative plan.  The alternative plan turned out to be going to the cinema to see 'Wrath of the Titans'.  We also must have missed the memo about having to stand up during the small feature presentation for the King and as we were sitting the furthest forward we didn't notice until right at the end that we were the only people seated.

That evening we just had a quiet night; went over to a small local place for dinner and then just over to one of the reggae bars on by the lake for a quick nightcap.  Pretty uneventful day; however these are always good to have at some point just to have a bit of relaxation.

The following was to be the last day on Ko Samui before travelling over to Koh Phangan.  The weather had taken a complete opposite turn; the sun was out and the heat blistering.  We arranged to meet early in the morning to get a prime spot on Chaweng beach.  The beach at Chaweng is decent.  Not as commercial as Patong, and not as quiet and relaxing as Railay.  We picked a spot and pretty much lounged down for the next 4 hours, basking in the sunshine.  At 4 we headed back to the hotel as Matt was landing in Samui and we were meeting at 6 to grab dinner and to have a catch up on the last couple of months of travelling.

For dinner we all decided to go to the market to have some authentic street food.  First up was a chicken kebab which was amazing; however the pepper at the end turned out to be an enormous chili... which I only realised once I'd stuffed the whole thing into my mouth and took a massive bite on it.  The next 5 minutes involved me drinking more water than you can shake a stick at and coughing non-stop.  Next!  We went for the main course next and each of us had a Pad Thai, that again was really good and took literally 2 minutes to make.  After a food stop we headed down to a bar on the beach front to have more of a catch up over a couple of beers.  The four of us spent the next couple of hours swapping travelling stories and Matt and I reminisced about the days in Buenos Aries; especially the epic finale at Boca Juniors.

After a while we all wandered back to the hotel; making a quick stop at the Dukes Bar the grab a another beer tower.

Early start on day 4; up at 7am and picked up at 8 to get the ferry across to Koh Phangan.  Although Ko Samui was just a stop gap; it was great meeting up with old and new friends again and a good way to start the week of the Full Moon!!!

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