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
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.
