Ko Samui 2008

24-28 Oct 2008 - Sunburnt in Samui

24 Oct 2008 - We've landed

Decided to head out for a short getaway over the long Deepavali weekend. The obvious choices came up, Bintan, Batam, Bali...etc . Finally decided on Ko Samui since I've already had my Indonesia stamp on my passport (more on that later). There is only one flight out to Ko Samui daily and it's a late flight, probably catered for the office worker to not miss work for a weekend trip. The flight arrives in Samui at about 9pm (their time), so by the time we reached the hotel, its too late to do anything except sleep.

The hotel is gorgeous though. Samui Jasmine Resort. I highly recommend it to anyone heading to Samui. It's located on Lamai beach, which is not as crowded as Chaweng but there's still plenty of nightlife, restaurants and shopping. There's only about 30odd rooms in this resort, which means plenty of personal (and excellent) service. We took the sea-view rooms on the 3rd floor (walk-up, no lifts). Rooms on the 2nd and 1st floor are cheaper but they only have a "garden-view". For about $30sgd more, you could get the villas which are quite nice as well.

Check out the rooms. The rooms are huge with a massive bathroom and very beautiful veranda with lounge chairs to look out into the sea. The window was perfect for soaking in the bathtub while watching TV.

View from the room.

25 Oct 2008 - First day in Samui

Good morning Samui. Since the little town of Lamai is more of a resort town, there isn't much "local street food" for breakfast that I usually go hunting for. So breakfast was taken in the hotel. Even though it's low season and the hotel is barely half-full, the staff do not cut corners. Everything is so beautifully done, even the fruits are cut into extremely visually-pleasing shapes. And the restaurant was right on the edge of the beach, so it was just lovely sitting down, having a cup of coffee, some tropical fruits and enjoying the sea breeze.

Check out the beautiful lobby. Fresh fruits can be found on that tray every day and they are entirely complimentary. The Mick could probably survive here just by paying for lodging.

Samui Jasmine Resort

October is rainy season, and rainy season means low season for visitors. I like it this way. No noisy crowds to contend with. Everything's calm and peaceful, just the way a holiday should be.

The Camel's Toe

Classic Red Postbox

View from "The View". A lookout point on a cliff located between the Lamai and Chaweng beaches.
Since we arrive too late the night before to arrange any trips, we decided to book a half-day trip of the island, starting in the afternoon. There are quite a few selections to choose from, half-day, full-day, island hopping...etc. But most of the trips take you to the same old places. We really wanted to just rent a motorcycle and explore the island (there is only one main road circling the island), but the weather never did cooperate with this plan.

The "Grandfather" and "Grandmother" rocks. It's a Samui tourist attraction that's pretty much a rock shaped by a cock and a formation shaped like an asshole. (PS. The asshole leaks)

I did not like the exploitation of the monkeys for this "Monkey show". There were 3 monkeys chained to coconut trees. This was the little one. He was just chained there and he kept getting tangled up when he tried to run around the tree. I thought it was animal abuse.

Classic Bike. It was in pristine condition.

Coconut Oil 50 baht. Didn't buy, but this place (part of the monkey show, was selling oodles of coconut-related products.

This was the temple next to the "mummified monk", which was the next stop in our tour. I didn't feel it was nice to take photos of the monk. To be fair, the tour was designed for the whiteman who'd never seen Asia.

Next stop on the island tour was the Namoung waterfalls. As we had only signed up for the half-day tour, we only got to see the smaller of the 2 (for those of you visiting Samui, there are 2 Namoungs. Namoung 2 is the taller falls. Much nicer. I didn't have any good shots of the waterfalls to post. Anyway, at the foot of the falls, there was an "elephant trekking" adventure. Optional (rip-off) part of the tour. The elephants were really friendly though. As you can see in the upper picture, the female sure knew how to pose for the camera. There was a stall selling bananas to feed the elephants. I guess the elephants have wised up that if they pose for tourists, tourists would buy bananas to feed them (and we did).

Nathon town was by far my favourite stop of the tour. I think we were there during one of their festivals because there was a massive "pasar malam" type environment set up. Stalls of food and wares were on sale. There was also a huge stage being set up, but we didn't go back in the evening to see the festivities proper.

We had our first taste of authentic Thai food from this lady. She was making a proper papaya salad. It was delicious. Funny thing was when she was prepping it, she showed us the chilli-padis and asked us how many we wanted. Not knowing the heat-level, we only elected to have 1 padi (should've asked for more :D)

Pig stomach soup. It tasted very much like sichuan hot and sour soup. Same consistency as well, except for the pig stomach ingredient.

My favourite dish at the street market. It's basically bits of fried pork. There's "siewbak" (fried pork belly), normal fried loin... etc. You'd pick the choice of pork, and the server would dish it into a small banana-leaf package containing glutinous rice. This is then wrapped up and grilled over a charcoal fire. Tasted amazing. Each little pack was bite-sized, so you could have one of each kind of pork.

Glutinous rice stuff in bamboo and grilled. Looked pretty good, but I didn't try it.

Assorted vegetables. Some pickled, some fried with chilli... etc.

awww.. such cute little bunny wabbits. My only question was... "Are they delicious"

random photo at the pier.

The second from last stop was this giant Buddha thingy atop a hill. It was pretty high up, but the view was quite nice. There was a bunch of bells ringing (pun intended) the statue. Supposedly, you need to walk around it and strike each bell to bring you luck. There were quite a few "supposedly will bring you luck" things to do at this particular site.

The ONE thing I did at the Buddha site was to try this pancake thingy. You know what? It was prata. Served by an indian guy. Cept it was dessert prata. I had the Nutella "pancake". It was yummy.

Last stop was this Kuan Yin place. It had this massive Kuan Yin and next to it was the fat buddha. The statues seemed more Chinese in origin, but when you got close, you could definitely see some Thai influences.

Finally back to our Jasmine beach. The cabana boys were hard at work converting the day deck chairs to a night beach front restaurant. Looked really wonderful.

We had decided on Seafood as the Menu for the night. But we decided to walk down Lamai street instead of eating at the Jasmine beach. We were actually looking for one of those nice little restaurants with with fresh seafood displayed out front, when we came upon this side street with hawkers selling their wares on trolleys.

This lady serving Mussel omelette really caught our eye (and our noses, it smelt amazing), and we chucked the seafood restaurant plan down the drain.
After we ordered (mussel omelette, grilled chicken hearts, tomyum seafood soup, fried chicken thighs), it started to rain, so we told the hawkers that we wanted it to go and we brought the food back to the hotel for consumption. The food was really good. We definitely wanted to revisit the mussel place and have some repeats.

Random arty shot

26 Oct 2008 - Sun day around the Islands

After the drizzly Saturday, we decided to try and out and we booked a sea-island-hopping-canoeing-marinepark-snorkling tour for Sunday. Thankfully, we were blessed with fantastic weather. The skies were clear and sunny for the entire day.

Morning at Jasmine Beach. Like I said, the cabana boys work hard here. The day chairs are laid out every morning before sunrise and the beach is raked and smoothed. Classy.

On the way out.

To be completely honest, Ko samui felt quite overrated. The beaches weren't really that nice and the marine park place was devoid of sealife. Halong bay was much more beautiful.

The steps leading up to the Emerald Lake

The Emerald Lake was one of the attractions of the tour. It's an inland lake filled with seawater...Kinda Hohum IMO.

On the way back.

27 Oct 2008 - Lazy Monday

Our 3rd day there and our first sunrise. It was quite stunning.

As I said, Ko Samui felt very overrated to me, but I cannot fault the Jasmine resort. I loved the place. Everything was beautifully done and exuded pure class all the way. There were many of these flower arrangements dotting the path from the hotel to the beach, and they were always fresh and always beautiful. I would go back just to stay in that hotel.

After breakfast, we decided to take a walk down the beach. This time north towards Chaweng (we walked south on our first day). Two people reading this blog will find these huts familiar. They looked exactly like the ones we stayed in on our trip to Tioman. Arrr. Pirate Rum.

There was this lovely makeshift bridge spanning over an inlet. Figure the locals got sick of getting their feet wet when trying to cross via the beach.

Random artyfarty shot. I named this "Lonely Planet"

"Floating Along"

"Morning Catch"

"Dog buried in Sand"

"Pembrella?"

For dinner on Night 3, after walking up and down the street and not really seeing anything appetising, we decide to go back to the street food place to get another helping of Mussel omelette. Sadly, she wasn't open. Oh woe. We decided to try the other stuff that we missed on the first night. The kebabs weren't that good. A little tough.
Various deep fried items.
The stall that sold the grilled chicken hearts we ate on the first day. Definitely had a repeat performance this night.
This is what low season looks like at night. I'm guess during peak season, this street would be full of whitepeople. IMO, the whiteman has ruined Asia. The peace and quiet was definitely welcome.